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Early Childhood Development
A Gift That Keeps Giving
Our Focus At GROW
The Philemon Project’s GROW Center not only provides high-quality early childhood education, but it also addresses some of the United Nations’ most pressing global issues. The center fights food insecurity by providing two meals and two snacks per day; it decreases gender discrimination by providing empowerment to its all-female staff; it reduces child labor and trafficking by providing low-cost education to families; and the center promotes equality, respect for the individual, strong work ethic, and dignity for all.
The first step to cognitive growth and emotional resilience is achieved through helping the children actively explore their environment through play, active learning, communication, books, and music. Each day children experience a comforting routine of stories, creative exploration, and play.
The strength of active learning :
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Better vocabulary and language
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Increased concentration
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Higher levels of engagement
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Improved gross motor skills
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Improved impulse control and resilience
Our Center prepares a child to grow into a critical and thoughtful human being through early cognitive development, valuing words, communication, and tolerance.
The Philemon Project’s (ECD) is making a profound impact on the lives of at risk children and their parent(s). We focus on four core areas in our work:
Wholistic Transformation
Meet Our Staff
GROW Center is female-run and embodies the best ideals of empowerment, equality, respect for the individual, strong work ethic, and dignity for everyone's rights. GROW trains its staff in the best practices of early childhood development and empowers them to facilitate prosocial behavior, provide activities that foster appropriate social, cognitive and emotional skills, provide necessary assistance to students' parent(s), and develop a social network with the community—all within a Christian worldview.
The Philemon Project provides a safe, clean, and supportive Christian environment for the children and essential work, training, and empowerment to its staff, ALL women—a societal group usually marginalized in the Middle East.
Our staff run five sections for our children. Each class section has one primary teacher and a teacher's assistant. Along with our teaching staff, we have four support staff and a director to oversee the day-to-day operation, and a nurse to ensure our children and parents' health and our social worker oversees our adult mentoring program enabling healthy, functional relationships between children and their parents.
A Message From Our Teachers
"For me being a teacher is not just a job. Teaching is not something just to pay the bills. It’s not a profession where you count down the hours left in the day. Children are the most important part of every society; that's why I chose this career path. I love teaching because teaching allows me to give a child the experience of someone who really understands them and accepts them for who they are. I love being an early childhood development teacher at GROW, because I am passionate about children and I enjoy interacting with them, I love to know their language. It is so important to guide children as they develop. I love to share what they feel and enjoy every second with them while also meeting their needs for health, safety and care."
- Eliza Kodjaian
"Teaching is my passion! At GROW, we work with kids from different diversities and intercultural backgrounds. Beside the early learning foundation that we're providing (alphabets; recognizing letters and sounds; identifying shapes, colors, and numbers), we are also shaping their lives, by teaching them from the very young age life manners and socializing skills. We also help our students express their feelings and emotions through songs, drama, and arts, and especially through creative play. Kids are worth investing effort in. I gladly choose to be part of this process. Being a teacher at GROW lets me invest my love, life skills, education and beliefs in my work."
- Nairy Mardirossian
Adult Mentoring
A vital part of our commitment to holistic development is working with the children's parent/s in our Adult Mentoring program, which is carried out by our psychologist. Each session focuses on best practices and parenting skills, along with relevant parent-child developmental values and ideals. On average, we have a group of 10 parents consistently attending our adult mentoring sessions twice per month; this group comprises a wide range of ethnicities and religious backgrounds. Our psychologist, teachers and leadership team observe measurable benefits from the adult mentoring program.
Our adult mentoring program contributes to the overall well-being of the whole family. When a parent takes part in the mentoring program, they have a better understanding of the advantages of building a healthy family and that family's capacity to affect society for good. Building healthy members of a family is a step towards building healthy members of society and reflects strong values of the individual and her power in society; this power creates capacity for goodwill and strong social cohesion.
For more information about GROW's adult mentoring ministry, please contact us.