The BKs adapted the idea behind Values Education to use a front, an honourable looking cover for their core activities ...
It provides an appearance of separation from their core activities that they could use to get into places - such as schools and colleges, to target children and young people where going through the door as a Doomsday cult they could not - and it's promotion is based on the usual Brahma Kumari deception, eg its creation story about "educators at the United Nations" meaning BKs at the BK office, or "implemented in 67 countries at over 4,000 sites" meaning all the BK centres in the world.
They promote "Humility" as a value, and yet they are always boasting about a grossly exaggerated connection to small, unimportant departments within the huge United Nations Organisation.
It's not real "knowledge", none of the BK faith is, as establishing what is real knowledge (science) requires hard work studying, experimenting and results that are reproducible.
I'll will write more on its roots and development but what is more important is to look at the qualities or values that the BKs chose to promote as "universal values" and question them;
Peace, Respect, Cooperation, Freedom, Happiness, Honesty, Humility, Love, Responsibility, Simplicity, Tolerance, and Unity.
They all appear to be on the submissive side to me ... and what does "Freedom" mean within the BK world? What hypocrisy.
The LVEP organisation was originally run by BKs. Now it involves non-BKs ... but that too is a trend the BKs adopt, of using non-BKs as deceptive fronts for them.
How can you promote "Honesty" when you are being as deceptive and dishonest at the BKs are?
May be they should take a few of their own lesson?
For example,
they write, Educator evaluations have been collected from teachers implementing the program in countries around the world ... At West Kidlington Primary School in Oxford , England , the Headteacher, Mr. Neil Hawkes, reported that in a working class neighborhood school students learned to be responsible for their behavior.
What they don't say is, Neil Hawkes is/was a BK adherent promiting BKism, therefore non-neutral.
Outsiders are misled.
It's all just BKs giving BKism or BK service projects good reviews made to look as if they were independent.
Background
Living Values: An Educational Program grew out of an international project begun in 1995 by the Brahma Kumaris to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations. Called “Sharing Our Values for a Better World”, this project focused on 12 universal values. The theme -- adopted from a tenet in the Preamble of the United Nations’ Charter -- was “To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person . . . .” Living Values: A Guidebook was created as part of the Sharing Our Values for a Better World Project. The guidebook -- which provided value statements on the 12 core values, offered an individual perspective for creating and sustaining positive change, and included facilitated group workshops and activities -- contained a small section of values activities for students in the classroom. Those few pages of classroom values activities became the inspiration and impetus for this program.
Living Values: An Educational Program was born when twenty educators from around the world gathered at UNICEF Headquarters in New York City in August of 1996 to discuss the needs of children, their experiences of working with values, and how educators can integrate values to better prepare students for lifelong learning. Using Living Values: A Guidebook and the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a framework, the global educators identified and agreed upon the purpose and aims of values-based education worldwide -- in both developed and developing countries.
I think it actually started from a sincere enough and non-BK project for street children in South America.