ACTIVITIES:
DEVELOPMENT
EDUCATION
Over
the last decade, there have been significant changes in the cultural and
social contexts in Italy.
While the international scenario is changing, the schools in Italy
are increasingly
multi-ethnic, creating a need for the school students and teachers to
learn new approaches.
Education
about development, about peace and about inter-culture are increasingly
constitutive elements of cultural and teaching environment of schools
and other teaching institutions. Schools must be aware of socio-cultural
contexts of different issues such as inter-culture, development, 
human
rights, peace, north-south imbalance, imbalances between populations and
resources, migrations, human rights violations, conflicts and power
issues between countries, dynamics of culture in the global village,
etc. Apart from the problems in these areas, it is equally important to
promote reflection on the responses to these themes by different
stakeholders, including the role of international organisations like
AIFO. It is important that young persons have the information to analyse
and understand the messages received from the wider society, to
understand prejudices and stereotypes and to understand the impact of
globalisation on people’s lives. At the same time, it is important to
promote a community where cultural, gender and generational diversities
are recognised, accepted and valued.
For
this, it is important that schools are open to new collaborations,
including those with the world outside the school institutions, as
foreseen and promoted by Italian Ministry of Public Instruction. In this
context, AIFO promotes many educational initiatives in collaboration
with different AIFO groups present all over the national territory
including refresher courses for teachers, meetings with school children,
organisation of summer camps, organisation of visits of persons and
cultural
groups from developing countries, organisations of exhibitions,
etc.
Some
examples of the recent significant activities of development education
carried out by AIFO included visit of blind dancers from Sree Raman
Maharishi academy (India), visit of dancers with hearing disability from
Ghana, organisation of an exhibition on human rights
called Likelemba, organisation of an exhibition of African objects
called Abunte, etc.
For
more information about AIFO's development education work, take
a look at AIFO's annual reports and other publications.
Other
AIFO Activities:
