The Education Grief Toolkit is a groundbreaking initiative in Barcelona offering a set of activities, explanations and resources on grief and mourning for use with teenage students in the classroom
It was presented today at the Pati Llimona Civic Centre at an event featuring contributions from experts and other people involved in this area
The main aim of these activities is to give young people the resources they need to confront a reality that affects everyone while making them aware that, although universal, death can be approached and experienced in many different ways
Cementiris de Barcelona and the UNESCO Association for Interreligious Dialogue (AUDIR) today presented the Education Grief Toolkit, a teaching resource featuring a set of proposals, activities and explanations about grief and how to approach it. It is a groundbreaking initiative in Barcelona that seeks to address grief in educational settings. It is designed for use in schools with students from the third and fourth years of compulsory secondary education (ESO) to the first and second years of Baccalaureate, as well as students aged 14 to 18 in general.
AUDIR and Cementiris de Barcelona are offering this educational resource to any schools in Barcelona wishing to avail themselves of it. In view of this, they presented it to the public today at the Pati Llimona Civic Centre. The event, which included a discussion on teenage grief featuring experts and other people involved in this area, was attended by Miquel Trepat, general manager of Cementiris de Barcelona, and Sergio Arévalo, co-director of AUDIR in Barcelona. The discussion featured Francesc Torradeflot, a Doctor of Theology and History of Religions; Merche Cuesta, Director of Emergency Services and Social Emergencies at Ajuntament de Barcelona (CUESB); Sofia Dengrà, a volunteer and psychologist at the AVES grief support and mutual assistance association, and Espartac Peran, a journalist at Televisió de Catalunya.
A new resource to teach teenagers about grief in class
The toolkit has been developed by AUDIR, an organisation that fosters dialogue between people of different religions and beliefs in partnership with Cementiris de Barcelona and with the advice of individuals from a variety of religious traditions and non-religious beliefs in Catalonia.
The toolkit approaches grief and mourning as a process of loss that can take place in a variety of situations, such as after death or a breakup, in connection with leaving one's country or home, or even after losing a part of oneself. It is always treated as an ongoing process because it is not an event that lasts a single moment but a personal journey or even a group journey, as the Education Grief Toolkit can also be used to address some aspects of collective grief. The idea is to view grief and mourning as a process of adapting to a new reality without the person or thing that has been lost, treating it as a time of transformation in which everything is in constant change. Adolescence is itself a crucial stage of life marked by change. This is why this joint project by AUDIR and Cementiris de Barcelona is specifically aimed at teenagers, on the basis that this may be a good time to discuss grief and mourning with students whose transition to adulthood, leaving their childhood behind, also involves grief of sorts.
The Education Grief Toolkit includes a pack for students with brief explanations to enable them to do the activities, a virtual pack for teachers with more comprehensive information to provide additional context for classroom work if they consider it necessary, and additional materials in the form of fact sheets and visual resources.
The structure of the Education Grief Toolkit is divided into four distinct blocks containing various activities grouped by section and subject area. The first block covers the life cycle and all those things that we associate with life, which helps us to understand death better. The second block explores religious diversity and funeral rites. The third and longest block addresses grief and mourning, and in the fourth one, students discover cemeteries as an integral part of daily life and the urban landscape that reflects one or more of the ways in which each society understands and experiences death.
AUDIR is the UNESCO Association for Interreligious Dialogue, a multi-belief Catalan public organisation that has been declared as being of public benefit and in which diverse beliefs and convictions are valued and respected. Its activities foster knowledge, dialogue and cooperation both between the various religious denominations and between them and non-religious beliefs in Catalonia.