By VICTOR BASSEY
Growing character for life
Character development is often treated as something children learn by being told what is right and wrong. A child is taught to respect others, tell the truth, help people, control their emotions, and behave responsibly.
But knowing a value and living by that value are not the same thing.
A child may be able to define integrity but still struggle to tell the truth when doing so has consequences. A child may understand respect but find it difficult to respect someone with a different opinion. A young person may know that service is important but have little experience taking responsibility for a real problem in their community.
This distinction is central to effective character development.
Recent research on character education in non-formal settings examined 25 studies involving children and adolescents and found that programmes built around values education, positive youth development, resilience and personal and social responsibility can support social, emotional and moral development. The review particularly identified positive outcomes in areas such as empathy, social-emotional skills, self-esteem and belonging.
For RISE Values Youth Initiative, this reinforces an important principle:
Character is not simply taught. Character is developed through understanding, relationships, practice, reflection and action.
From Knowing Values to Living Values
Character education is an intentional process of helping children develop moral and civic virtues, ethical reasoning and socially responsible behaviour.
Importantly, the research describes character development as involving three interconnected dimensions:
Moral knowing - understanding values and ethical principles.
Moral feeling - developing empathy, concern and emotional dispositions toward others.
Moral action - being able to translate those values into behaviour in real-life situations.
This distinction is important for how we design programmes for children and young people.
At RISE, we do not want a child to simply say:
"Integrity means honesty."
We want that child to eventually face a difficult situation and think:
"I know what the right thing is, I understand why it matters, and I am prepared to act accordingly."
That is a much deeper form of learning.
The RISE Approach: Teach, Practise, Live
Our approach can be expressed simply:
Teach the value → Practise the value → Live the value
1. Teach
Children first need to understand what a value means.
What is respect?
Why does honesty matter?
What does empathy look like?
Why should we serve our community?
This creates the foundation.
2. Practise
Understanding is then converted into experience.
Children discuss scenarios, participate in role-play, solve problems, work in teams, debate ethical questions and respond to situations that require them to make decisions.
This is where values become practical.
3. Live
The ultimate goal is behaviour.
Can the child demonstrate respect when angry?
Can they remain truthful when nobody is watching?
Can they recognise when another person is struggling?
Can they take responsibility for improving something around them?
This is where character begins to become part of everyday life.
The research supports this experiential orientation, noting that non-formal environments can give children opportunities to practise responsibility, empathy, cooperation and perseverance in real-life situations rather than learning them only as abstract concepts.
The Four RISE Values
At the heart of RISE are four values:
R - Respect
Respect begins with recognising the dignity and worth of ourselves and others.
For a child, respect can mean listening when someone else is speaking, treating people fairly, respecting boundaries, accepting differences and learning how to disagree without degrading another person.
Respect should therefore move beyond:
"Respect your elders."
It should become:
Respect people. Respect yourself. Respect boundaries. Respect differences. Respect your community.
Children need opportunities to practise these behaviours in everyday situations.
A discussion about bullying, for example, can help a child understand respect intellectually. A role-play where they must respond to a bullying situation gives them an opportunity to practise it.
I - Integrity
Integrity is the connection between what we believe, what we say and what we do.
It involves honesty, responsibility, accountability and making ethical decisions even when doing the right thing is difficult.
This is particularly important because children learn not only from what adults say, but also from what adults demonstrate.
Character development therefore cannot be separated from the behaviour of the adults surrounding a child.
Teachers, parents, facilitators and community leaders become part of the learning environment.
If we tell children to be honest but routinely demonstrate dishonesty ourselves, the lesson becomes contradictory.
For RISE, integrity must therefore be both taught and modelled.
Children should encounter realistic situations where there is no obvious easy answer:
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What would you do if you found money that belonged to someone else?
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What happens when telling the truth could get you into trouble?
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Should you protect your friend if they have done something wrong?
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What do you do when nobody is watching?
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What does taking responsibility actually mean?
These questions develop ethical reasoning rather than memorisation.
S - Service
Service takes character beyond the individual.
A child who understands responsibility should eventually ask:
"What can I do to make things better for someone else?"
Service teaches children that they are members of families, schools and communities, and that citizenship involves participation.
This is why service should not simply mean asking students to perform an occasional act of kindness.
It can involve identifying a problem, understanding it, developing a response, taking action and reflecting on the outcome.
For example, students could:
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identify an environmental problem around their school;
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organise a reading initiative for younger pupils;
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develop an anti-bullying campaign;
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support a community cleanliness project;
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create awareness around online safety;
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mentor younger students;
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identify a challenge affecting their community and propose solutions.
The activity becomes more meaningful when children participate in the entire process.
They are not simply being told to "help people."
They are learning responsibility, initiative, teamwork, leadership and citizenship through service.
E - Empathy
Empathy helps children move beyond seeing the world only from their own perspective.
It involves developing the ability to recognise, understand and respond appropriately to the experiences and feelings of others.
A child who develops empathy may begin to ask:
"How would this make another person feel?"
"Why might they be behaving this way?"
"What can I do to help?"
This is particularly important in environments where children interact with people from different backgrounds, personalities, abilities and experiences.
Empathy can be developed through storytelling, discussion, role-play, collaborative activities, reflection and real-life experiences.
The research reviewed by Correa Díaz identifies empathy and other social-emotional outcomes among the positive areas associated with character-development interventions in non-formal contexts.
For RISE, empathy should therefore not remain a definition in a workbook.
Children should experience situations that require them to listen, understand, respond and care.
Why Experience Matters
One of the strongest insights from the research is the importance of relational and participatory environments.
The review found that non-formal contexts can provide flexible environments where learning is more closely connected to everyday life, relationships and community experience. These settings allow children to develop values through social interaction and lived experience.
This has significant implications for how RISE delivers its programmes.
A RISE session should not always look like a conventional classroom lesson.
There should be room for:
Stories.
Questions.
Scenarios.
Role-play.
Debates.
Team activities.
Reflection.
Problem-solving.
Community action.
Personal commitments.
The objective is not simply to keep children entertained.
It is to create situations where they have to think, feel, decide and act.
Character Development Is Relational
Another important lesson is that character does not develop in isolation.
Children develop within relationships.
Their families, teachers, peers, communities and wider social environments all contribute to how they understand and practise values.
The research describes character development as being connected to recognition, trust, belonging and participation, particularly for children who may experience disadvantage or social exclusion.
This reinforces the need for RISE to work beyond the student alone.
A sustainable character-development programme should gradually involve:
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Students
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Teachers
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Parents and caregivers
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School leadership
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Community stakeholders
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RISE facilitators
If a child learns empathy at a RISE session but encounters constant humiliation at home or in school, the lesson may struggle to become a lasting behaviour.
Character education therefore requires an environment that reinforces the values being taught.
From Lessons to a Culture of Character
This is where RISE can go beyond delivering weekly values lessons.
The objective should be to help schools develop environments where children encounter the same principles across different parts of their lives.
For example:
Respect
Should appear in classroom interaction, student leadership, conflict resolution and school communication.
Integrity
Should influence academic honesty, responsibility, accountability and decision-making.
Service
Should be reflected in student projects, leadership opportunities and community participation.
Empathy
Should influence peer relationships, inclusion, bullying prevention and how students respond to others.
The four values should therefore become behaviours that children repeatedly encounter and practise, not simply topics they cover.
Building a Nigerian Character-Development Model
There is another important consideration for RISE.
We should learn from international research without simply copying programmes developed in other countries.
The systematic review itself identifies a need for integrated, continuous and context-sensitive practices in character education. It also highlights the diversity of existing approaches and the difficulty of creating a common framework across different educational and social contexts.
For RISE, this means our work should continually ask:
What does this principle look like in the life of a Nigerian child?
A lesson about integrity should reflect situations children actually encounter.
A lesson about respect should acknowledge Nigerian family, school, and community relationships.
A lesson about service should connect children with problems they can see around them.
A lesson about empathy should help them understand people whose experiences may be different from their own.
The goal is not to create a foreign character-education programme and place a Nigerian logo on it.
The goal is to develop a character-development approach that is evidence-informed, culturally relevant and practical for Nigerian children and young people.
Measuring Character Beyond Attendance
Another challenge for character education is measurement.
It is relatively easy to measure whether a child attended a programme.
It is much harder to determine whether the child is developing stronger ethical reasoning, empathy, responsibility or prosocial behaviour.
The review identifies methodological inconsistency and difficulties in defining and measuring moral constructs as continuing challenges in the field.
This is an area where RISE should be deliberate.
We should not claim that a child has developed integrity simply because they completed an integrity lesson.
Instead, we should gradually develop ways to observe and measure:
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understanding of values;
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decision-making;
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behaviour in practical situations;
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relationships with peers;
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responsibility;
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participation;
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reflection;
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service activities;
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leadership behaviour;
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teacher observations;
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student self-reflection.
The goal is to build evidence of development, not merely evidence of participation.
The RISE Character Journey
Ultimately, the question RISE should ask is not:
"Did we teach the child about respect?"
It is:
"Is the child increasingly able to demonstrate respect in real situations?"
Not:
"Did the child learn the definition of integrity?"
But:
"Can the child make responsible and honest decisions when faced with pressure?"
Not:
"Did the child participate in a service activity?"
But:
"Does the child increasingly recognise their responsibility to others and their community?"
Not:
"Can the child explain empathy?"
But:
"Can the child recognise another person's experience and respond with understanding?"
This is the difference between values education and character development in action.
The RISE Commitment
RISE Values Youth Initiative exists to support children and young people in developing the character, values, and practical skills needed to navigate life responsibly.
Our four values — Respect, Integrity, Service, and Empathy — provide the foundation.
But the real work happens when those values move from:
the page → the classroom → relationships → decisions → behaviour → everyday life.
That is why our approach is not simply:
Teach the value.
It is:
Teach the value.
Practise the value.
Reflect on the value.
Live the value.
Because the ultimate measure of character is not what a child can say about a value.
It is what they choose to do when the value is tested.
RISE Values Youth Initiative
Growing character for life.