This document discusses the Declaration of the Civil Society initiative presented by IFFD at the UN's 20th anniversary of the Year of the Family. It has received endorsements from 132 organizations in 58 countries. It also discusses trends impacting intergenerational relationships like increased mobility, urbanization, and non-traditional family structures posing challenges but also opportunities for support. Family bonds remain strong with family members assisting one another through challenges.

6. Declaration of the Civil
Society
The Declaration of the Civil Society is
the initiative of IFFD to be presented at
the United Nations’ Twentieth
Anniversary of the Year of the Family in
2014. Already, it has received positive
feedback: to date, it has been
sponsored by 132 organizations from
58 countries.

8. In Preparation for the Cairo+20 Summit:
In a presentation titled, “The Role of the Family in Education for Sexual
and Reproductive Health,” Ignacio Socías said that, “parents have not
only the right but also the duty to convey to their children the contents of
sex education that are suited to the human person, as well as the duty to
show them with their own behavior and personal decisions, since only
thus can a child then freely choose and develop his or her personality.”
Socías’s speech brought the perspective of family to this meeting, a
component that is increasingly necessary in considering development and
population.

9. Trends impacting
intergenerational
relations
Several demographic and socio-
economic changes such as
population ageing, increased
mobility and migration, rapid
urbanization and break-up of
traditional extended family
structures pose numerous
challenges to social integration and
intergenerational solidarity. Such
trends present new demands on
family members and test the
grandparent-parent-youth-child

10. Among those demands is the rising
cost of caring for older dependents
often negatively impacting families’
employability, productivity as well as
savings ability. Moreover, changing
living arrangements have resulted in
older persons living alone, in skipped
generation households, or in
institutionalized settings. On the
other hand, with growing
unemployment disproportionately
affecting youth, young people may
need to depend on their parents or
grandparents for material support or
housing provision longer than before.

11. Despite these challenges, research
indicates that in both developed and
developing countries, family bonds remain
strong and family members assist one
another through financial support and care
with many surveys pointing to the fact that
older people are more likely to provide
support to younger generations. What’s
more, in many countries, it is grandparents
who are often day care providers for young
children when their own parents are at
work. They may even assume the role of
near-custodial grandparents, where
grandchildren reside with them while
parents migrate in search of jobs. Skipped
generations are not uncommon in many
regions, where orphaned children, often
due to HIV/AIDS, are in permanent care of
their grandparents

12. An important arm/branch is IFFD Spain
(formerly Instituto de Iniciativas de
Orientación Familiar) which has parallel aims
& activities.
http://www.iiof.es/

13. IFFD Spain (just like the rest of the IFFD organizations
worldwide) aims to promote, spread and develop the
“Family Enrichment” way in order to improve family and
social life. In effect, all these “Family Enrichment”
programs seek to help parents in the education of
children and in their own personal and marital lives.
http://www.iiof.es/

14. To the left are the collaborating partners.
One of the collaborating organizations is the
Foro Español de la Familia (Spanish
Family Forum):
http://www.forofamilia.org/

15. Since its inception Spanish Family Forum was
legally constituted as an association of
associations, and came into being as the result
of an agreement between the principal Spanish
family associations to set up a civil, non-
confessional platform to voice and defend the
interests of family associations in Spain and to
have at the same time an international
projection.
The Foundational Agreement of Spanish Family
Forum was signed in Santiago de Compostela
on 23 July 1999 and the association was legally
constituted on 24 March 2000.
At the present time, the total number of
associations and other bodies associated to the
Forum represent over 4 million Spanish
families.

16. Heading the Family Forum currently is
Mr Benigno Blanco.
Here’s a video where he speaks on the
“Family in the 21st
Century”.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FOROdelaFAMILIA

17. MISSION:
The mission of Family Forum as stated in its founding charter is to defend and
make present in Spanish society the interests of and the values represented by
the family. To this end, it will:
a) Propose and communicate measures of family policy to political
parties.
b) Defend marriage as an institution of essential societal importance, worthy of
all respect and support.
c) Defend the right of parents to educate their children in freedom.
d) Defend human life as a value which is inseparable from the family.
Major Campaigns:
Family Policy
Gender Identity
“Mother Network”

18. May I suggest that you download & read the
important IFFD paper “Towards 2014:
Empowering persons and society through
the promotion of families”? Click HERE.

19. In the next few slides, I provide a suggested
outline for a talk or class on EDUCATION [or
"Parents as primary educators of children"].
My chief source is the excellent
article by Prof. Tomás Melendo arvo.net…

20. EDUCATION: 10 basic principles, and 1 key
element:
— First-order pieces of advice:
1- The first thing parents need in their task of education is a true
and firm love for their children.
2- The first thing that a child needs to be educated is that his
parents love each other a lot.
3- Educate in loving.
— 7 added recommendations:
4- The best educator is example.
5- Encourage and reward.
6- Exercise authority, but without forcing it or wasting it.
7- There is need to learn to scold or punish appropriately.
8- Form their conscience.
9- Don’t malform –or bring up badly– your children.
10- Educating in freedom.
— …And the key of all keys:
11- Recourse to God our Lord!
http://youniv.wordpress.com/category/univ-education/

21. • 1) Familiaris Consortio # 36: “The task of giving
education is rooted in the primary vocation of married
couples to participate in God’s creative activity: by
begetting in love and for love a new person who has within
himself or herself the vocation to growth and development,
parents by that very fact take on the task of helping
that person effectively to live a fully human life. As the
Second Vatican Council recalled, “since parents have
conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn
obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must
be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of
their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that
scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it. For
it devolves on parents to create a family atmosphere so
animated with love and reverence for God and others that
a well-rounded personal and social development will be
fostered among the children. Hence, the family is the first
school of those social virtues which every society needs.”

22. • The right and duty of parents to give education is essential,
since it is connected with the transmission of human life; it is
original and primary with regard to the educational role of
others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship
between parents and children; and it is irreplaceable and
inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely
delegated to others or usurped by others.
• In addition to these characteristics, it cannot be forgotten that
the most basic element, so basic that it qualifies the
educational role of parents, is parental love, which finds
fulfillment in the task of education as it completes and perfects
its service of life: as well as being a source, the parents’ love
is also the animating principle and therefore the norm
inspiring and guiding all concrete educational activity,
enriching it with the values of kindness, constancy,
goodness, service, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice
that are the most precious fruit of love.” (FC, 36)”

23. • 2) & 3) FC #18: “The family, which is founded and given life by love, is
a community of persons: of husband and wife, of parents and children,
of relatives. Its first task is to live with fidelity the reality of
communion in a constant effort to develop an authentic community of
persons.
• The inner principle of that task, its permanent power and its final
goal is love: without love the family is not a community of persons
and, in the same way, without love the family cannot live, grow and
perfect itself as a community of persons. What I wrote in the
Encyclical Redemptor hominis applies primarily and especially within
the family as such: “Man cannot live without love. He remains a
being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love
is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not
experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately
in it.” (FC, 18)”
• 4) “Fray Ejemplo” [Father Example] as the Spanish would say.
“Practice what we preach” as they would always say. And parents –
just as children– would have to realize that example is the best
preacher. This is a constant BATTLE: I ask you to watch this
wonderful motivational video which I got from a Facebook group
“Debemos Retomar los Valores” [Back to Values]:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zp-GfQoIbw&feature=player_embedded
Continued in ‘NOTES page’…

24. http://arvo.net/familia-educacion/gmx-niv134.htm
Questions? aliza.racelis@up.edu.ph 