For us it is crucial to enter the classrooms and flank school education with civic education centred on the topics of forced migration and human rights, participating in shaping the skills of to-be active citizens. We chose to do it our way: letting refugees, operators, and those who experience this reality on a daily basis speak. During our encounters in the schools they are the teachers, and through their voices the students have a chance to put themselves in their shoes and see the world through their eyes.

 

“Reading a story in a book does not allow you to have a direct interaction with the person that lived that experience, a person that when you see his or her eyes, they say more than a thousand words can do”. This is what a student wrote to us after a meeting. And this is exactly what we hope for: that in that silent circle of chairs may grow a profound understanding that goes beyond words.

 

We bring in the classrooms the voices of migration in several ways: through a single encounter with a refugee; through longer projects presenting different points of view; through in-depth meetings centred on specific civic education topics. We want to guide kids in the discovery of important data and concepts, in an exploratory process centred on game and creativity, and in a shared reflection on topics such as inequalities, human rights, the environment, and different aspects of migration, both at an international and a local level.