The Peace School Foundation of Monte Sole, created in 2002, has its registered office and operating facilities in the Historical Park of Monte Sole, founded in 1989 by a law of the Emilia Romagna Region. Its aim is to promote training and peace education projects, non-violent conflict resolution, respect of human rights, for a peaceful living together among different people and cultures, for a society without xenophobia, racism and any other kind of violence towards human beings and their environment.
The place today
Monte Sole is a triangle of hills, approximately 10 miles south of Bologna, between the valley of the river Setta and the river Reno. Today around 60% of the territory are covered by woods and the rest has been turned into meadows, pastures and, in small part, is also used for agriculture. The way it looks today is just a pale trace of what used to be there at the end of the Second World War, where houses and little villages were spread all around.
The silence and the peacefulness of this seemingly untouched place is the result of a terrible violence, a violence that is testified by, by the ruins one can find there, a sign of what happened during the Second World War.
At the Peace School, we ask ourselves about the reasons that made the system of terror manifested in Monte Sole and during the Second World War, and which we find, in different ways and forms, in other places in the world and in other moments of the history.
Starting from a historiographical reflection around those facts and from the knowledge of the mechanisms of violence that made them possible, through the memory of who was there and of the place itself as a silent guardian of its past, activities of the Peace School are developed today:
- Tailored educational and training experiences for students and teachers of schools of all levels, for groups of young people and group of adults, for professionals.
- Interactive workshops, even residential, of reflection around the question: how was and is it possible? How can Monte Sole speak to the present time? How can we go from the often rhetorical Never Again to the incessantly question Why Still? The workshops we offer are not “turnkey” packages but are focused on people, their needs and their goals.
- International residential camps (in Italy and abroad). Educational experiences to allow and encourage discussions and dialogue between distant and different young people, in situations of conflict or post-conflict and/or grappling with the construction of their future cohabitation space.
- Research. The Peace School is involved in oral history projects about the elaboration of memories (poetics and policies of memory) and their possible use in an educational perspective, as well as in research paths on participatory educational methodologies.
- Hospitality. Peace School also means managing a democratic space for meetings between institutions, associations and people interested in promoting peace: hospitality for several days for civil society groups who want to share a piece of their road and their reflections with us.