Education rhymes with peace: the next World Forum organized by the Schengen Agreement for Peace will be held in the spring of 2015 in Cairo. This is thanks to the project Living Peace, which has its own “operatiions centre” in Cairo. The announcement was made during the last Forum in June, on the occasion of the awarding of a medal “Peace Prize Luxembourg 2014” to Carlos Palma, founder of Living Peace.

It was one of the projects presented, along with the “best practices” in the course of “Learning Fraternity“, an international meeting organized in September 2013 by the various educational agencies of the Focolare Movement, including AMU an organization accredited by the Ministry of Education in Italy. Experts in the field, teachers, young people and families met to discuss the issue of globalization and how it is necessary to begin thinking about education from a global and solidarity perspective.

Presentations were made of the current and future activities of the New Network Peace Project, which began in Italy in 1990, and that in April 2013 saw the signing of a protocol of national cooperation with AMU. There are about 5,000 students participating in classes on an ongoing basis – while about the same number participate in individual initiatives. They carry out activities such as training courses for parents, students and adults, art competitions, sports activities that highlight the values ​​of loyalty and respect of the opponent, the twinning of Italian and schools from other countries, visits to drug recovery communities or for people with disabilities. The main objective is to create a network that not only raises awareness among young people, teachers and families on issues such as multiculturalism and integration, but also promotes discussion among people and values their talents.

The journey that began with “Learning Fraternity” continues: in this context, Amu is organizing for the next school year in Italy paths of active citizenship divided into four strands (Globalization and Fraternity, Inter-culture, Economics and the Culture of Giving, Environment and being a responsible consumer). Globalization and Fraternity is also the central theme of the Campus of Global Citizenship that will take place over the course of a day around April/May 2015 in the international town of Loppiano (Florence), for 1st and 2nd year secondary school students and their teachers. There are other projects already under way, both in Italy and abroad, and other newly launched ones in the wake of the previous ones. Such as the twinning of “A school in the Andes” to support the educational centre of Bolivar in Peru, or the project “Schoolmates”, in which boys and girls participate in a worldwide network between school classes – a mutually enriching experience, sharing cultures, languages, traditions and initiatives that are already up and running.

The projects and initiatives are numerous: we invite you to continue to follow them over the summer, to get to know more about them and to consult them on the “Education for Development” section of the AMU site.