Dear friends and colleagues,

Are you fortunate enough to live in a country where your colleagues from Waldorf kindergartens and child care centers meet from time to time to learn from one another, formulate their ideals more clearly for their daily work with young children, and warmly perceive the initiatives of one another? Such an atmosphere fosters the growth of our movement.

Do you live with the conscious awareness that you have colleagues scattered all across the globe working in diverse social and cultural contexts in the service of the developing human being, attempting with the help of Waldorf education to strengthen the creativity, vitality and life confidence of the young child? Such an awareness of a worldwide community of colleagues can contribute to the strengthening of constructive, life-affirming forces in an age of globalization where it is quite well known that there are also other less helpful forces at work.

IASWECE has given itself the task of fostering such worldwide awareness. The articles in this newsletter offer a small contribution - impressions from Zimbabwe, Russia and Costa Rica, as well as short reports from conferences in Romania, Ukraine, USA, France, and Scandinavia.

Links to articles and research reports in the right hand column of the newsletter also lead to a wealth of good ideas regarding the development of the child.

With warm wishes,

Philipp Reubke, Clara Aerts und Susan Howard