Malaika is committed to making positive contributions to the community, and to promoting a democratic way of life based upon justice, equality, respect for all people and opportunity to learn positive life skills that include self-management, interpersonal communication, mentoring, goal setting and effective conflict resolution.

Conflict Resolution:

Malaika fosters children’s ethical and social development through the Character Education and leadership program in conflict resolution, violence prevention, intergroup relations, and character education. Malaika defines the term peaceable as meaning a “safe, caring, respectful, and productive learning environment.” A major premise of Malaika is that teachers learn to model the behavior they teach through direct instruction, and schools assume the values they seek to nurture among young people in all facets of their program. As an example of how Malaika operates, it recommends that students and teachers make decisions together about classroom norms at the beginning of the school year and that teachers give early instruction in problem solving and decision making so the skills can be used and reinforced throughout the year.

Malaika provides a grade-level-specific curriculum for prekindergarten through grade 12 that has a unified sequence of content and skills. To entrench conflict resolution in schools, Malaika programs are purposefully tied to school improvement. The content of the Malaika curriculum is grouped into five components: community building, understanding conflict, perception (understanding different viewpoints), anger management, and rules for fighting fair.