Previous editions

Our history

The International Peace Education Campus is the most innovative initiative proposed by the Piccolo Principe Association and the Parishes of the District capable of activating the participation of young citizens, Schools, the Municipality of Milan and partners of other Italian and foreign realities, especially French and Bosnian.

The initiative was born with the aim of thematizing the integration between young people of different cultures and religions who live in the neighborhood also through experiences of real integration; and yet, over the years, the subject of reflection has become issues related to Borders, Justice and Forgiveness, to the fears and possibilities hidden in the fabric of the city's relations and finally to the periphery and its relationship with the rest of the city. .

The migratory flow in our European and Italian cities, increasingly intense from various parts of the world, forces our culture to rethink itself by including new models, that is, new ways of interpreting life, relationships, one's relationship with nature and religion. and to redesign a scale of values. This crisis will be a providential passage if actively participated by citizens and explicitly led towards the definition of a new anthropological model; otherwise it risks becoming a dangerous stalemate in which feelings of fear and in the long run of hatred can mature, fueled by the ignorance of the other, by mutual distrust and prejudice, and also by a certain disinformation and short-sighted political demagogy.

In particular, young people, protagonists of this change from today, and absolutely of the future, in order to be ever more attentive and responsible citizens must be educated in those inviolable values of peace and conviviality which are real elements of our Tradition. Christian roots, also present in the Italian Constitution and in the dream of a United Europe.

The International Peace Education Campus had the ambition to be a symbolic action, a start of a process of dialogue in the neighborhood, a laboratory of peace, between young people and adults of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

1st edition 23 - 31 August 2016

Man and borders

"The difficult task of creating the conditions for cohabitation, peaceful and advantageous for all, of different forms of life, is unloaded on local realities (especially urban), which are transformed, willy-nilly, into laboratories in which they are experimented, and in the end we learn the ways and means of human cohabitation in a globalized planet. Frontiers, material or mental, of lime and brick or symbolic, are sometimes battlefields, but they are also creative workshops of the art of living together, of lands in which seeds are sown and germinate (consciously or not) of future forms of humanity. " From In the borders are the identities of the Future, by Z. Bauman

II edition - 13 - 19 February 2017

The city: a crossroads between fear and possibility

III edition 17 - 24 February 2018

Peace is justice

The campus, now in its third edition, is not just a cultural initiative but a real laboratory of integration and multicultural coexistence in which young people aged between 18 and 25 from Milan and some Italian cities will participate and European, each with its own history, its own social background, its own religious and cultural affiliation. The initiative provides that guests can find hospitality in the local families who are willing to welcome them. Meals are instead served at the oratory of Mary Mother of the Church for all participants as a privileged moment for informal aggregation. Each participant will leave as a gift to the organizing body a book possibly themed and written in the language of the country of origin which will constitute the cultural heritage of the campus for the benefit of the children and young people who attend the oratory of the Parish of Mary Mother of the Church. A team made up of two educators and two cultural mediators / translators from the Opitrad agency will lead the participants on a path of discovery and in-depth study on the theme: "Peace is justice" articulated over the seven days of the Campus

IV edition - 10 - 15 February 2019

Decentralization! City and suburbs beyond all existential boundaries

Our periphery, like all the others, suffers from some evils already present in the thought that developed them and made them agglomerations in which hardship and poverty are concentrated; at the same time, however, a rare humanity becomes evident in it, which can deliver itself as a prophecy of the future for the entire city. The Peace campus, a successful initiative, the start of an unexpected process of dialogue and welcome, is now in its fourth edition. In it we would like to focus on the need that the periphery has of the city and that vice versa the city has of the periphery. True integration also comes from here! The title is “De-centering! City and suburbs beyond all existential boundaries ".

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5th edition 16 - 22 February 2019

Communicating peace

For some months in Italy, but also in other European countries, we have witnessed a sudden revival of extremisms and nationalisms aroused and supported by narrow and short-sighted politics. Europe, with its current structure and with the dream of the founding fathers who represented it as the abode of peace and rights, today more than ever is at risk of disintegration, of Balkanization, violently attacked from many sides.

The rigid closure of borders and the sinking of every political and economic perspective of reception offends the dignity of men and women and minors who have set out for a better future. But the integration of new European citizens and second generations is also at risk above all. The common perception of them is not a resource but a problem; the impoverishment of their rights and their difficult social emancipation will sooner or later correspond to the identical violation widespread even in the weakest sections of our society. A war is underway between the poor who are unable to understand the truest social problems and unable to create an alliance for common rights and development.