Education & Fraternity: Board of Education and International Meeting

The educational crisis is one of the urgent challenges of our time. There is need for a renewal in formation programs to meet the demands of students who wish to achieve their goals in an era of globalization.   

A group of Italian educators, which includes teachers, youth group leaders, psychologists and pedagogists have come together in a “National Board of Education” which, since 2010 has met in Grottaferrata, Rome at the headquarters of the New Humanity Movement which promotes the project in collaboration with “Action for a United World”, “Education for Unity” and “Teens for Unity“.

The latest novelty to come out from the work of the Board has been that of placing on the 2013 agenda an “International Meeting for the World of Education”, which will be held in Castelgandolfo, Italy on 6-8 September 2013. The meeting will gather people who are in any way involved in the world of education: family, school and catechesis, youth groups, researchers and teens. The declared objective is to lay the groundwork, on an international level, through an exchange of ideas, educational approaches and best practices, and to implement projects in various countries.

In Italy the Board publishes online educational, didactic and methodological projects from several parts of Italy, like education for peace, citizenship and comprehension which demonstrate that only an authentic interpersonal relationship of reciprocal giving, can be the principle of every great educational event, capable of favouring the full realization of the personality of each and every one.

Some students from a science high school in the province of Catania are a witness to this. Educational programmes in education for the common good, for appreciating not only the cultural patrimony of the individual disciplines, but the unity of human knowledge and universal values, with the goal of helping students to interiorise the messages and bring about a transformation in their way of life. With the involvement of experts from various fields, meetings are planned with associations involved in the field of development and cooperation and volunteering.

The teenagers themselves become the protagonists of projects of solidarity and sharing, as with the “distant support” project for children who live in difficult situations, but also within the classrooms, sharing their materials, talents, abilities.

Cecilia Landucci teaches literacy in a first class school in the province of Rome. She is the coordinator of field projects with the commission for “Education and Culture” of New Humanity: “The Board is a concrete network of educators. Knowing each other’s experiences promotes collaboration, brings us out of our isolation, favours the spreading of what is already happening and becoming a cultural way of thinking in the field of education within the light of the charism of unity; the elaboration of a project for Italian schools, which can help redefine them.”