Josie's Hope Model

Last night eleven year old Josie presented her multi-dimensional hope model at our AGM. There are many things that I find amazing about Josie's model.

I will describe what it looks like so that you too can see how amazing it is. It is a four sided diamond shape. On each of the four points there are the words faith, dreams, courage, and knowledge. The inside of the diamond is a radiant blue. The word hope is on the inside with red and yellow sun rays radiating outward back to the four words. Each of the words also have an arrow pointing from the word back to hope in the center. On the outside of the diamond shape Josie wrote a note to Sandi Hiemer, the school counsellor, saying that is you Sandi!! Then on the outside of each word she wrote you have faith, you have courage, you have knowledge, you have dreams, most importantly you have hope.

Josie told us how faith, courage, dreams and knowledge make up her hope. She began her presentation with "I believe there are four things that help us to have hope. I have faith in my family and friends. I have faith in others. I have faith in my school. They teach me so much to get into university and college." Her description included present and future hopes and how they in essence feed off of each other. She then went on to do the same for knowledge, courage and dreams.

By now I probably don't have to say much about how amazing the model is. But even as I write this, I am struck by something that I did not think about since seeing it and having a discussion with Josie last Thursday and then hearing her presentation last night. So I will tell you why I think it is amazing, just in case I missed something else.

First of all it is a multi-dimensional model that represents her hope. If we were to impose another model or scale of hope to measure Josie's hope we might miss the most important components of her hope. Sometimes we get a call at the Hope Foundation asking us for a scale to measure children or youth hope. We do have a couple of measures at the Hope Foundation, but when I look at Josie's model, I am not sure they would encompass what is hopeful for her now and how she sees these four pillars as helping her to move toward a desired and meaningful future.

The arrows and rays in Josie's model illuminate how faith, courage, dreams, knowledge and then, in turn, her hope inform each other. The arrows from the words faith, courage, knowledge, and dreams point inward, the rays from hope radiate back out toward to influence her courage, faith, knowledge, and dreams.

Finally, I want to comment on the fact that she named Sandi as a significant adult in her world who influences her current understanding of hope, but also her hope for the future.

The arrows and rays along with naming Sandi as a significant adult demonstrate to me how hope and resilience overlap and inform each other, but also how hope motivates resilience.

I imagine that Josie has used and will continue to us this model without paying much attention to how it works to sustain her hope. I imagine also that hope may very well become a stronger guiding force in Josie's life now that she has made hope visible to both herself and the adults who interact with her.