The Educateurs sans Frontières that gathered in Thailand this summer, came from 26 different countries. We spent two weeks getting inspiration from one another’s projects, and brainstorming on how to allow Education for Peace to reach more people, because more than ever, peace must be built. It may have even become a prerequisite for the survival of humanity. Peace starts in people’s minds. Establishing lasting peace requires the ability to understand the complexity and sense of compromise, the perception of the unity and diversity of the world simultaneously.
Peace is a science, an art, and a culture. And one has to learn it. In building peace, there is no small act or small scale. What is taking place between women and men, between children and adults and between children themselves, in the family, classroom, or neighborhood, is found at the level of relations between nations.
During the Assembly in Thailand, teams formed organically, to think about the different means of achieving our objectives. Everyone walked away with an action plan, at small and large scales. The new website, which will become increasingly interactive and thus better assign our resources to be able to act effectively, is an example of an action at a collective scale.
At the individual level, I left the Assembly, reinforced with confidence, ideas and new connections to enable KidsRfuture to broaden its scope and thus reach more children. KidsRfuture is a global organization, its aim is to allow Montessori schools for underprivileged children to subsist and develop. We now know that not only the Montessori method is working with all cultures and social backgrounds, but it also has a natural resilience effect in traumatized children. The child regains his dignity, his self-esteem, his trust in others, his freedom of choice, and the desire to learn and explore.
“The well-being of children today is inseparable from the peace in the world of tomorrow” – Henry Labouisse (UNICEF)
The financial support that the organisation brings to these structures, that are always in a precarious balance, is through children in elementary Montessori communities, who choose a school to help, an action to take, organize it themselves from beginning to end, and finally send the funds they have raised to their new friends at the other end of the world.
Children who are helping also derive great benefits in terms of openness to the world, implementation of altruistic and collaborative values. We may hope they will always remember they can make a real difference in others’ lives. A new ambition for KidsRfuture, that emerged from the Assembly, is to create a children’s blog, that enables all those who participate to exchange ideas of actions to take, share photos of their events, ask for help if they know of a school that has an urgent need, and hence create a community of young ‘changemakers’. Because more than ever, building peace is crucial.
“The child has a power that we do not have, to build the man of tomorrow” – Maria Montessori.