The core of the Child Honouring vision is expressed in A Covenant For Honouring Children, which Raffi wrote in 1999, along with nine principles which it gave rise to.
“I had been visiting the family of eco-architect Bill McDonough, on the Jeffersonian campus of the University of Virginia. Spurred by my search of the Declaration of Independence for references to children (there are none), I drafted a similar emancipatory piece for the young,” writes Raffi.
Starting with “We find these joys to be self-evident, that all children are created whole,” it goes on to affirm the young as holding the caring ideals at the heart of being human, and closes with our duty to use peaceful means to protect and nurture our most vulnerable citizens, and the Earth whose diversity sustains us all.
In this video version of the Covenant, the recorded voices you’ll hear besides Raffi’s are those of Jane Goodall, the Dalai Lama, Jetsun Pema (the Dalai Lama’s sister) and a youth from the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, India.
- Download the child-friendly version of the 9 Child Honouring principles here
