Get ready for an epic collaboration between Havan Clothing and Re:Play Toy Hub that combines the joy of play, ethical clothing, and social impact.
Play Unlimited, just like Havan Clothing, believes in the power of play for well-being, building communities & social impact. Their Re:Play Project focuses on recycling and redistributing toys to underprivileged communities, tackling plastic pollution. Enter the magical Re:Play Toy Hubs, where you can buy or rent toys for some awesome 'Stay and Play' activities at the Re:Play Toy Library.
Recognising their shared vision, Havan Clothing and Play Unlimited joined forces to create something extraordinary. The chosen Toy Hub was in Subang Jaya's Daman Mall. The result? An unforgettable play workshop for the children in the Havan School Program.
Both Havan Clothing and Play Unlimited firmly believe that toys are essential for every child's upbringing. Throughout the workshop, the children explored recycling and upcycling through fun games. They even crafted their own toys using recycled materials, promoting mindfulness in a creative way. But the real highlight was yet to come!
Step into the wonderland known as the Re:Play Toy Library! The shelves were filled with dolls, cars, and cuddly stuffed animals, waiting to be played with. The children dove into imaginative role-playing and energetic rough-and-tumble sessions. The supervisors couldn't help but catch the contagious joy in the air. It was a sight to behold for everyone present!
This collaboration between Havan Clothing and Re:Play Toy Hub was an absolute blast, leaving no one untouched by the magic of play. The lively atmosphere and unique learning approaches had a profound impact on both children and adults. It was an opportunity for growth, creating unforgettable memories and fostering stronger bonds.
A huge shoutout to the amazing team at Re:Play Toy Hub for making this mind-blowing experience possible. This collaboration showed us that play is not only crucial for education and community development but also a gateway to pure happiness. So, embrace the power of play, ethical clothing, and social impact, and get ready for an extraordinary journey!
]]>Let's take a moment to celebrate the remarkable individuals behind Chumbaka, a social enterprise devoted to equipping children with extra skills through captivating technology workshops. With boundless energy, infectious enthusiasm, and a sprinkle of humor, they led the workshop, leaving an indelible mark on young hearts. Their unwavering commitment and ability to connect with children deserve our heartfelt gratitude.
In a world where technology is commonplace, this 3D workshop became a precious opportunity for the children involved. It introduced them to the mesmerizing world of 3D art and allowed them to master basic commands we often take for granted. The sheer joy on their faces as they learned and explored the technology was a testament to its transformative power and the incredible journey it set in motion.
The workshop itself was a tapestry of emotions, with laughter, awe, and unexpected revelations filling the room. The children's excitement was palpable as they unleashed their creativity, delving into new skills like using the brush tool on the 3D website. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and what touched us most was the spirit of collaboration that emerged among them. They willingly shared their knowledge, fostering teamwork and support. One child, Kishan (pseudonym), stood out as an inspiring figure, experiencing personal growth and emerging as a natural leader, guiding and inspiring his friends.
Beyond the artistry, the workshop provided invaluable insights into the progress and challenges faced by the students. Some thrived with specific character prompts, while others felt anxious with the freedom to choose. These observations will guide future endeavors, ensuring tailored activities that meet each child's unique needs and preferences, fostering inclusive and supportive learning environments.
The impact of this workshop will forever resonate with all who participated. We witnessed the transformative power of experiential learning, where young minds blossomed and hearts soared. Our deepest gratitude goes to Chumbaka for their dedication and unwavering belief in every child's potential. Together, we are breaking barriers, igniting passions, and empowering children to reach for the stars.
Let us continue this extraordinary journey of learning, joy, and inspiration. Unlock the true power of education, shaping a brighter future for our little ones. With each step forward, we nurture confident, creative, and compassionate individuals who will shape the world with their brilliance. So, let's celebrate the magic of learning and embrace endless possibilities together.
]]>A rich and more complex feeling word allows children (and adults alike) to make finer discriminations between feelings. This helps them to better communicate with others about their internal affective states; and to engage in discussions about their personal experiences with the world. Ultimately, labeling is a way of validating one’s emotion by acknowledging it.
]]>For example, if you see a child is frustrated over a broken toy, you may say, “you look frustrated that the toy is broken.” In this instance the child learns a new feeling word “frustration” through the emotion label given by an adult. Labeling a child’s emotional state allows them to begin to identify their own internal states. This is an important step in learning to regulate emotions.
Building Emotion Lexicon
Parents and teachers can foster emotional vocabulary by teaching feeling words and their emotional definitions. Through play, conversation and special activities, adults can increase children’s Emotion Lexicon. In Havan EQ Program, we expand students’ feeling vocabulary by having special activities such as:
Name It to Tame it
For a start, we invite you to try out our fun activity #10 with your children. Try to quiz your children by providing a sound that can be paired with a number of emotions, like a sigh that could be associated with “fatigued”, “sad”, “frustrated”, and “irritated”.
Although children don’t always know how to identify an emotion by word, they may know the sounds that accompany them. For example, your children may not know the word "worried" but they may know that "uh-oh" or the sound of air sucked in through our teeth goes with that same feeling. Similarly, “wow” is associated with “surprised”
A rich and more complex feeling word allows children (and adults alike) to make finer discriminations between feelings. This helps them to better communicate with others about their internal affective states; and to engage in discussions about their personal experiences with the world. Ultimately, labeling is a way of validating one’s emotion by acknowledging it.
Do you know by just naming the emotions, you’ll feel much better. In an experiment, four groups of people were exposed to a big spider. First group was asked to describe their feelings and experience being around the spider. The second group was asked to talk about what do they think about the spider, rationally. The third group was instructed to say anything that's irrelevant to the spider and the fourth group was not instructed to say anything at all. After a week, all of the participant were re-exposed to the spider and were told to get closer to the spider and touch it. Scientists found out that the first group that labelled their fear being around the spider performed far better than the other groups. They found out that they were less emotionally aroused, they got closer to the spider and their hands were less sweating. So, just by naming the emotions, it helps to ease out the intensity of the emotions. That's why, in Havan EQ program, we teach the children to expand their feelings vocabulary so that they can express themselves better. We did activities like drawing the Emoji or making feelings color wheel. Do check out our blog posts to find out more about this activity. I'm Dr. Hany. Thanks for watching and believing in our cause in developing a high EQ community. Stay tuned and spread the message.
]]>In our previous video, we talked about self-awareness as the foundation of building high EQ. We believe one of the effective activities to increase self-awareness is through mindfulness practices. Thus, we always start our class with a 10 minutes mindfulness activity in the Havan EQ Program. These activities aim to anchor the students’ motions and attention, which in turn helps to get them ready for the class.
The common practice of mindfulness is through quiet-sitting meditation. Naturally, young people will not find quiet sitting appealing. So, we need to creatively infuse mindfulness concepts into the many interesting experiential learning activities we normally conduct during classes.
In this post, we’ll share with you the most popular mindfulness activities with our students.
Eating with Senses
Mindful eating involves eating slowly and engaging our senses by paying attention to the flavors, colors, aromas and textures of the food we are eating. We can also pay attention to the sound of chewing and notice the effects of food on our feelings and body. Showing appreciation and gratitude towards food is mindful eating too.
We have so far tried mindful eating raisin, orange, waffle roll, and prune in the classroom. Our students are always excited with this activity because they discover new ways or fun ways to eat. Some of them even commented that food tasted better when eaten mindfully.
Moving with Attention
Is there a way to be in motion and still be practicing mindfulness? Absolutely! The main objective of mindful movements is to notice the sensations of the body in motion. During a mindful movement activity, the goal is to stay present in the moment and notice the world around us.
Mindful walking is the simplest mindful movement activity. We instruct the students to walk around the classroom mindfully and quietly. They need to pay attention to their body sensations, breathing, temperature, surroundings and sound while walking. We have also created a variation of this activity by asking the students to pretend as an animal and walk like it. Walking like a monkey has since been the top pick for mindful walking.
Listening with Acceptance
The trick to get the ever energetic students to be quiet and still in the class is by giving them a mission. We will ask them to pay attention to the surrounding sounds and note down what they have heard in 10 minutes of quiet time.
Sometimes, we make it like a game by splitting students into groups and compete against each other. The team which notices the most sound wins. We have students who reported that they heard their friend’s heartbeat, air-con noise, someone scratching their toes, and the bird’s chirping.
In another variation, we play students’ favourite songs and ask them to list down the type of instruments that they could hear in those songs. Students will then realize that there are at least 10 instruments played in a song even though they have heard the same song many times before.
Seeing with Perspective
Observation is a form of mindfulness. We love playing the game “spot the difference” in our online classes because it helps the students to quiet down and activate their vision by focusing on the screen.
Mind is Full and Less
We have conducted surveys before among our teenage students on their perception towards mindfulness. Prior to experiencing the active and fun type of mindfulness activities, students commented that mindfulness was “unnecessary”, “boring”, and “not helpful”.
After experiencing a range of different types of mindfulness activities in our EQ Program, students’ perceptions changed and they commented that mindfulness helps them to “calm down and relax” and “increase self-control”. Some are even awestruck and have had spiritual realization that mindfulness is in their life and that everything they do can be a form of meditation!
All the positive feedback and insights again strengthen our belief that the Havan EQ Program is on the right track.
Besides using the EQ pyramid as a spine structure in designing our Havan EQ program, we also integrate mindfulness practice in our EQ education. Mindfulness is a state where we bring awareness to the present moment, feelings, thoughts, environment, and body sensations with kindness and curiosity. Mindfulness not only promotes self-awareness, it helps you to better focus, you feel calmer and less stressful.
That's why we always start our class with a ten-minutes mindfulness activity. So, the most common way to practice mindfulness is through quiet-sitting meditation which can be challenging for younger kids. So, we conducted interesting activities to introduce the mindfulness concept to the students. For example, mindful eating.
We gave each student an orange and ask them to pretend that they have never seen an orange before. So, we guided them to bring attention to the sensation of their hands holding the orange, to smell it, to examine the color, to shake it, to peeled it ,to taste the juice ,and to finally eat it. So, this exercise open up the five senses experience.
And interestingly, they discovered something new, even though it wasn't the first time they ate an orange. I will share with you more fun and engaging mindfulness activities that you can do it at home with your children. So stay tuned and spread the message.
]]>At Havan Clothing, we really love our t-shirts. We want to make sure that our customers (you) know how to take good care of it so that our clothing is able to sustain its longevity over time.
We outline a few tips and tricks about how a cotton t-shirt should be appropriately cleaned and cared for. By following our suggestion, you may be able to slow down the natural ageing of your t-shirts and eventually prolong the lifespan of your favourite t-shirts too!
1. Wash with normal temperature
Cotton t-shirts do not go well with heat. If you wash your clothing with high temperature, it may cause the fiber of the t-shirt to deteriorate and eventually it will shrink or expand depending on the nature of the cotton. We suggest washing your t-shirts with normal temperature water of 30 degrees works best - it could also reduce the risk of yellowish marks under the armpits (eww!) or de-colourisation of your favourite t-shirts.
Pro tip: Washing at lower temperatures also helps to save your electricity bills and reduces the impact on our mother nature too!
So, it's a win-win-win for all!
2. Wash with similar colours
Black with black - white with white! If you ever wonder why sometimes brighter colour t-shirts may have different colour spots on all over them after washing? To avoid that, you need to sort and separate your laundry by fabric types and colours.
For example, sorting out workwear and sportswear and separating brighter colours with darker colours and washing them separately.
Pro tip: Do not wash your new t-shirts with older clothing together - at least for the first wash.
3. Wash & dry inside out
We highly recommend all our customers to wash and dry our t-shirts inside out. This little tip is able to avoid the risk of pilling of natural cotton, fading of colour while maintaining the outer surfaces of t-shirts.
Pro tip: Alway, always ALWAYS to make sure you straighten and even out your t-shirts and hang it with your hanger for drying. This helps to remain the shape of the t-shirt and reduce the wrinkle of your t-shirt.
4. Iron on reverse
Fun fact: cotton t-shirts by its nature are prone to wrinkles and creasing. This has nothing to do with the quality or specification of the fabric itself. If a t-shirt is wrinkle free, most probably it is not a 100% cotton t-shirt; it's probably a polyester cotton blend garment. *remember to check the care label*
If you too like your t-shirt to look neat and wrinkle-less, the best way is to iron the t-shirt on reverse. Remember, cotton does not like heat. So iron our t-shirts with low to medium heat.
Pro tip: Spray some water on the surface of the t-shirt before ironing. This will give the cotton fabric some moisture before ironing.
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Welcome to Havan Channel. I am Dr. Hany
One powerful activity to increase our self-awareness is to make a vision board. Vision board is a board that used to build a collage of words and images that represent our dream and goals.
You need to prepare magazines, newspapers, flyers, brochures, or any printed materials. You need a pair of scissors, glue, one drawing paper or cardboard. The instructions are simple. Just flip through the materials and cut out any images or words that reflect your dreams and goal. You don't have to worry about the possibility of achieving the goal. Just cut it out if you like it and then paste them all on the board.
You may think that this activity is simple for a kid, but it involves self-reflection while choosing for the right images. They need to think about what inspires them, what motivates them. And images are powerful to help them to visualize the future. And it can empower them to set the intentions right to live a purposeful life. You may then facilitate the vision board by asking a set of guided questions to enhance their self-reflection process.
Click this link to view a set of guided question you can use to facilitate your child's work.
I have been creating vision board since I was 21 years old, at least once a year. Many goals and dreams are achieved over the years. That’s why I always know what I want to do and I live a purposeful life. So, make a vision board today! If you have never done it before.
Stay tuned, spread the message, and I will share with you another useful practice to increase our self-awareness in the next episode.
]]>In the quest of human beings looking for answers, they must first ask questions. The same principles apply to teaching the Havan EQ Program. Based on our experience, we found that what effectively enhances the learning process is through asking the right questions during lessons when students present or express their work in the given activities. We believe that asking facilitative questions help the students to make deeper connections with themselves.
Facilitative questions are designed to increase self-awareness, introspection, reflection, and exploration of optional meanings. Asking questions (as opposed to giving answers) facilitates students to clarify their goals, enhance their plans to achieve their goals and circumvent setbacks. Throughout the process, we are also generalizing their success to other areas.
Questions, if asked well, will have therapeutic effects. Do not ask questions as though we were police officers interrogating criminals.We must also be mindful that we don’t ask questions to fill the time or to satisfy our curiosity. All questions asked must be purposeful and targeted at increasing students’ self-understanding, insight and resolution to challenges.
Here are some examples of useful questions to facilitate childrens’ work:
You may find it awkward asking the facilitative questions like the above when talking with children. This does not come naturally at first but the efforts will pay off if you practice it with patience. Trust us, the insightful responses from children are the best reward.
So, are you ready to build rapport and enhance bonding with your children? If so, start to ask away!
Welcome to Havan Channel. I'm Dr. Hany. The objective to cultivate self awareness is to develop a sense of self. In another words, is to be able to answer the big question of “Who am I”
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Welcome to Havan Channel. I'm Dr. Hany. The objective to cultivate self awareness is to develop a sense of self. In another words, is to be able to answer the big question of “Who am I”
In episode 2, I give an example of activity to cultivate self awareness by asking your kids to draw a self-portrait. And this activity should be enhanced by a Q&A session when they show you their Masterpiece. Good questions can help the kids to think further and connect the dots, these are called Facilitative Questions that serve to help them to be more aware of themselves.
So, click the link and we will send you a set of guided questions to help you facilitate your kids’ work.
This is the example self-portrait of a 11 years old. As you can see, she's not only being expressive through drawing, but with words as well. So you may ask questions like:
"What do you like the most in this drawing?"
"What are you wearing on your head?"
"Love ourselves and others around your mouth area. What is this about? Can you tell me more?"
"I see sad face and a smiley face at the side of your skirt. Can you tell me what's the story?"
"What action can you do to help you to think positive?"
So good questions like this can help them to reflect and to make sense of themselves. Learning activities should always pair with good reflection questions like this to help them make sense of their work. In the beginning, kids may not really answer your questions because they're not used to it.
They may shake their heads or shrug their shoulders. So we can give a little guidance by giving example. You may say, "For me, I learn to practice Positive Thinking by focusing on good people and good things around me."
Example like this help them to think about more practical actions that they can do to think positively.
So, in the next episode, I will share with you another fun idea to cultivate self awareness. So stay tuned and spread the message.
]]>Welcome to Havan Channel. I'm Dr. Hany. Finally, the fourth element in the EQ pyramid is the ultimate treasure that gives us happiness. It is called relationship management. with a 3 levels support of the foundation: Self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness.
Relationship management is everything about the skills to manage our relationships effectively and constructively. It covers topics such as negotiation skills, leadership skills, communication skills, and collaborative skills.
I'm sure you are aware that these skills are so important because you need it when you work with others. There are many two hours or three days workshops available to teach these skills. Hopefully, you can master them just like how you learn up Microsoft Excel.
The truth is, you may feel motivated at first and then you forget everything and then you notice you still talk to your colleague in the same way that does not bring any benefits.
This is because when the foundation is not strong, it becomes shaky, it doesn't last long. For example, leader who has very little awareness towards emotions has problem to manage anger, will lash out on others easily. Especially leaders who have no empathy.
So, how do you expect a leader can just lead so well after by just attending three days workshop. So as you can see, EQ education requires a great deal of work, which is why the younger we start, the better, the easier. Stay tuned, spread the message.
And I will share with you some interesting ideas to cultivate self-awareness in the next episode.
]]>Havan EQ Program emphasizes hands-on learning, discussion, and relationship building through human interactions [Havan EQ Program for Teens]. These elements become tricky to execute when we are physically distanced. Although online learning is not ideal, Havan believes every cloud has its silver lining. Make a conscious choice to wear Havan T-shirt, and find out in this post how your contribution keeps us going during pandemic period.
Like all other teachers, we found online teaching extremely challenging especially to keep students engaged in the virtual classroom. After more than a year of conducting online lessons, we have created some “secret recipes” to enhance students’ learning experience:
“I like to move it, move it” – Body Movements
We know that kids’ attention span is short, kids’ screen attention span is even shorter! Thus, we integrate activities into our lessons that allow the kids to engage in meaningful movement to keep their brain fresh throughout our class.
We will always start the lesson with mindfulness activity. Our mindfulness activities are fun unlike the conventional Buddha-like sitting meditation. We have done mindful eating, mindful listening, jungle walking, animal dancing, and many more! Through movement, it anchors the kids’ motions and attention. This in turn helps to get them ready for the class. And they feel alive when they move mindfully!
Where words fail, music speaks – Music
Music has the power to access everyone’s heart and bypassing logical brain. Our online classes come alive when we start to incorporate music into our lessons.
We introduced songs from various genres. For instance, in one lesson, kids listened to the “Lava” song, and sang along. This instantly transported them to a beautiful island with lush sandy beach. They then had the interest to learn some famous places like Hawaii.
Most importantly, music is the key to unlock their memory bank and make the lessons stick. Many students may not remember what they learn in the class, but all of them remember every song we sang.
Let’s Party! – Virtual Celebrations
Life is a celebration, and we should not miss celebrating every special occasions, even virtually! Last year, we had our first online graduation. we mailed over the certificates and gifts to the shelter homes and children would “receive” them officially during our virtual graduation ceremony.
We celebrated other occasions like Christmas and farewells virtually too. We even had a pizza feast virtually. These moments reminded us how we used to live our life, celebrating great moments together.
Keep Calm, Homework is Fun – Homework
Homework is not “Half of My Energy Wasted on Random Knowledge”! In Havan EQ Program, homework serves as practical learning booster towards theoretical learning in class.
For example, in one lesson on positive self-talk, we first explained the benefits of having such habits, we showed videos, we had discussions during online class. But that’s not it. We gave home assignment to the students to conduct an experiment with plants by practicing positive talk and negative talk.
Each of them was given 2 sets of green beans to plant on separate containers. One was labeled “Positive” and the other was labeled “Negative”. Kids were asked to take care of the plants daily with equal efforts and place them at the same area to ensure the plants receiving equal amount of sunlight. The only difference was that they had to say 3 positive statements to the Positive plant and 3 negative statements to the Negative plant.
After a week, kids noticed the Positive plant grew beautifully but the Negative plant look “doomed”. Kids were so curious to find out why, so as an extension from this homework, we even consulted a botanist for the scientific reasons behind the experiment!
Homework like this in our classroom is powerful because kids get to experience the concept we taught during online class.
“It’s my pleasure” – Special Guest
It is much easier to get a guest speaker to join our online class because logistic arrangement is not a consideration anymore. Last year, we invited a doctor to answer all questions that the kids had towards Covid-19. We collected the kids' questions beforehand, and started knocking the door of some doctors and one of them had kindly accepted our invitation.
That session turned out to be a huge success and engaging educational learning experience for the kids. They even requested the doctor to show them his working place and the doctor happily acceded to such request. He used his phone camera to give a virtual tour to the kids around the hospital. That day, 3 students in the class told us that they feel inspired and want to be a doctor when they grow up.
Embracing New Norm
While we cannot predict or control how soon we can go back to “normal” classroom set up, we can however, control what we can do now guided by our findings [Efforts Come into Fruition] and experience. We are committed to continue discovering and trying new ways to enhance our virtual teaching to serve the kids well, if not better, until we can go back to normal classroom again.
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Welcome to Havan Channel, I am Dr. Hany
First two levels in the EQ pyramid are all about self - Self awareness and self-regulation.
The following two levels are all about others.
EQ exists because we need to live with others, no man is an island.
So level 3 is social awareness. It is the ability to see things from other people’s angle or we like to call it empathy.
Empathy helps us to stay connected with others through understanding other’s feelings and thinkings, so we can respond appropriately to the situation.
Instead of telling you all the benefits of being empathetic. I want to share with you what happens when a person is lacking of empathy.
They believe 100% that their own ideas or beliefs are right, and judge anyone who does not hold their beliefs as wrong.
They have trouble making or keeping friends.
They feel entitled to receiving favors and use you to serve their needs without showing appreciation. They will even get offended if they don’t get their way.
In a group setting, they will talk a lot about themselves and their lives without really caring about what other people share.
They tend to be rude, insensitive, or over sensitive and when they hurt someone, they tend to blame others.
So teaching empathy to kids is just like teaching friendship skills that we will all appreciate no matter where we go. I will share more ideas on how to cultivate empathy in this channel.
Stay tuned, spread the message. We will talk about the peak of the EQ pyramid in the next episode.
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Welcome to Havan channel, I am Dr. Hany
We talked about self awareness as the base in the EQ pyramid in the last episode.
Today we are moving up to level 2 in the EQ pyramid - that is self-regulation.
Self-regulation means how do you manage, adjust, balance, and supervise yourself.
In level 1, having self-awareness helps us recognise our feelings, needs, or desires. So, the next step would be how do I manage this bunch of information.
For example, I am aware that I am angry at a person who just shouted at me because this treatment is not acceptable in my reality. So, to manage my anger, I have many options.
The easiest and quickest way is to shout back to defend myself, or, I keep the anger to myself because I am afraid to fight back, or, I can walk away and cut off my relationship with this person, or I can take a deep breath and tell this person that I am not for shouting, when you calm down you can come back to talk to me.
There are so many ways to respond to this situation. The only problem is have we learnt what are the choices available to us at the moment in time? Most of us tend to react in moments without considering the choices that we have. As a result, these reactions end up hurting yourself and others.
By learning self-regulation, we are training ourselves to respond in a way that is protecting yourself and others.
We have taught hundreds of lessons in self-regulation and I will share with you all in this channel. Stay tuned, spread the message. See you next time.
Welcome to Havan channel, I am Dr. Hany
IQ gives you success, EQ gives you happiness. How?
EQ education is made up of 4 elements. I like to present it using the pyramid structure because the strong base at the bottom represents the basic but requires a huge amount of foundational work to move all the way up to the peak. I like to call it the EQ pyramid.
Let’s start with the base, it is called self-awareness.
Do you know everything about yourself? Can you list out your strengths and weaknesses? Can you describe your personality? Can you identify your boundary? Do you know what motivates you? Can you express your feelings from time to time? Can you visualize your future?
Self-awareness is the foundation in building your emotional intelligence. The more we know about ourselves gives us a better chance to manage and improve ourselves.
One lesson example to teach our kids about self-awareness is to ask them to draw a self-portrait. The process of drawing allows the children to think about themselves, to connect with themselves, and eventually to express themselves through colors and lines. Their drawing reflects how they see themselves as a person and allow them to get to know themselves better through their own drawing.
All the questions that I asked you earlier can be answered through activity like this one? Yes!
So, adults! You should draw one too and I guarantee you will discover something about yourself that you never thought of.
We have created hundreds of lessons to cultivate self-awareness. I will share the ideas in this channel. So, stay tuned. Spread the message. Next episode, I will talk about the second element in the EQ pyramid.
Havan believes
Havan EQ Program was initially designed for primary school children in 2016 with the belief that EQ education should start young to form a strong psychological foundation during the formative years.
Havan cares
Over the years, we have observed that small kids in our class grew to be teenagers and some of them went through tough challenges when puberty hit. Their emotional roller coaster ride became more intense. That’s how it got us thinking that EQ education should be extended to teenagers too. So, we rolled our sleeves and made some adaptation to our EQ Program to suit teenagers’ developmental needs.
Havan tries
In 2020, we officially launched our EQ Program to the teenager home and it has been a new learning curve for us. We need to learn about connecting with teenagers. In this 2 parts blog post, we wish to share with you our experience so far and how your contribution makes an impact on teenagers' life.
Understanding Teens
Teens are developing their personal identity at this stage. So, they tend to explore / challenge the status quo by engaging in behaviours / actions that may not be socially acceptable which could lead to a lot of resistance in their life. They often appear in “hangry” (hungry and angry) and “crashy” (crazy and trashy) mode. It is therefore a great challenge to gain their trust and interest.
Nay to “know-it-all”
We need to make sure that we are not another “know-it-all” adult trespassing their territory and tell them what is RIGHT to do. They feel they have enough getting lectured, receiving intervention, or simply being told by adults that they are doing it all wrong. Our EQ Program for teens needs to be sensitive by not making our classes feel like we are preaching some moral standards which they then are forced to follow.
We have more insights about the EQ Program for teens to share with you in the next post, stay tuned and thank you for making an impact on the life of young people by your purchase of Havan T-shirts.
]]>Welcome to our very first Havan Channel series.
We believe that empowering children through our very own EQ program. And this channel we hope to share with you all about our lessons, so that you can too apply it to empower your children.
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In our previous blog post, we shared with you how to measure the efficacy of the EQ learning Program that Havan has pledged to contribute 10%-15% of what our customers are paying to implement in the children's shelter homes (How We Measure Our Social Impact). In this blog post, we invite you to harvest the fruits of your contribution and our efforts based on our findings in the last 2 years.
5x more effective
Our findings indicated that children who completed our EQ Learning Program for one year show a 10% decrease of challenging behaviors based on surveys from their caregivers at the shelter homes. The results sprung 5 times, ie 50% if the same children stayed and consistently completed our EQ Program for TWO years. This proves that consistency is the key. Your purchase contributes to the sustainability of our EQ education. This number simply means the children have shown less temper tantrums and cooperate better with others that less bullying, stealing, and lying were detected. Essentially, they are calmer and focus better in class.
Voices that matter
We also collected the children’s feedback after completed the EQ program. We are proud to echo some internal voices from the children that have deeply touched our hearts:
These internal voices will shape the external behaviors. We have witnessed the transformation of some children from being reserved, apathetic, and oppositional to open to learn, engaged, and collaborative. Their feedback has empowered us to continue championing the EQ program for more children to join.
Game Changer
A research shockingly shows that shelter home children are 10 times more likely to become sex workers, 40 times more likely to have criminal records, and 500 times more likely to commit suicide (sourced). Based on the figures and feedback we collected from our EQ Learning Program, Havan believes we are on the right track to be the game changer.
This is what motivated Havan and keep us going, and we can’t do it without your continued support.
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Everyone falls; it’s not a question of ‘If’, but ‘When’. And 2020 was one of the worst falls Malaysians have ever had. Covid-19 brought the world to a standstill; planes couldn’t fly, people couldn’t work, and children couldn’t learn or play. And for us at Havan and our shelter homes, we faced difficulties we never would have thought of.
But we fought hard, and innovated to stay alive, not only for our business, but also the children who relied on us, to be there for them. So we brought the classroom to them, through online classes and dedicated teachers, willing to adapt to the tough situations. It wasn’t easy, but “nothing worth doing is ever easy”.
We explored stories and lessons, that we can bring to our kids, to help them cope with the situation - ‘to the big fall’ - that everyone is going through.
Through this exploration, we found a beautiful yet powerful book called “After The Fall” by Dan Santat. In it, Dan illustrates wonderfully how Humpty Dumpty loved sitting up high above on a wall, and watching the birds fly by. But one day, he had an accident, one day he had a “Great Fall”.
Fortunately, he was put back together again physically, but mentally, he became afraid of trying to go back up the wall, because of the fear of falling again. Weeks later, as he was playing with it, Humpty’s cherished paper birds got stuck on the wall, the same spot where he fell. But he wouldn’t and couldn't let his cherished toy go.
So he climbed, and climbed:
“I didn’t look up,”
“I didn’t look down,”
“I just kept climbing,“
“One Step At a Time”
He said to himself.
Until he was no longer afraid and he got to the top.
Here at Havan Clothing, we simply love the moral of the story, and how symbolic it has become for our shelter home children and the difficult year 2020 has been for us. Through Dan Santat’s brilliant masterpiece in storytelling, and the teachers we have here at Havan, we inspired our kids to look past their failures and just keep trying. Because it’s not what you do when you fall down, but what you do…
“After The Fall”
Oftentimes, people at large perceive EQ education as nebulous and intangible. Havan begs to differ. This is because we have hard data to back us up. In this blog post, we would like to share with you in the least academic (and bored) language, how we measure the efficacy of the EQ Learning Program that Havan has pledged to contribute 10%-15% of what our customers are paying to implement in the children's shelter homes.
This is the “social impact” that all of you are contributing to make it happen. Here’s what we have been seeing, and you can see it too.
The Blueprint
The EQ Learning Program was designed by one of Havan’s founders, Hany Cheng in 2016. She designs the Program in a progressive structure. Each term will need 4 months to complete before moving on to the next term. The Program is conducted at least 2 terms a year.
Before each term starts and ends, a survey is conducted to collect information and feedback. The pre and post results are then compared and analyzed by experienced tutors.
Scientific Approach
Survey is conducted on two groups of subjects, i.e. the children and their caregivers at the shelter homes.
Typically, the caregivers are asked to give a score to each defined challenging behavior of children such as hyperactivity, social, emotional and peer problems, etc. They then need to give a score again for the same questions when the term ends. For children, the main point of survey is to find out their understanding level of each EQ element that will be and have been covered in each term such as self-awareness, emotion regulation, empathy, relationship management, confidence, and mindfulness.
Survey is not just done through numbers and scoring, we conduct interviews with specific questions to collect qualitative data such as observation and feedback from the children and their caregivers before and after each term of the EQ program.
Dynamic Calibration
Combining all the available data, the term report serves two objectives:
(i) it gives Hany and teachers indications if the term has brought the desired effect; and
(ii) it is the basis whether any adjustment is required for the content used in the coming term.
As a result, the Program although is designed with certain fundamental goals and content, it is constantly being fine-tuned and customized to fit the needs of the group of children attending the Program.
Keep Advancing
We hope you now have an overview on how the social impact that you’ve made through Havan is valued. It is indeed the most tangible asset we can pass on to our children. What we have yet to figure out, and will continue to do so, is how to measure the breadth and length of such impact to not just children, but to community and society at large, or ultimately humanity.
Your continued support will make sure we can see it through one day.
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