Leaders for Peace: Campaign kicks off with look at post-pandemic world

By Vatican News staff writer

Italy continues its outreach efforts of the Leaders for Peace campaign, standing alongside the young students of Rondine Cittadella della Pace in the post-pandemic restart.

The global campaign was presented to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See on Monday.

The initiative

The initiative, organised by the Italian Embassy to the Holy See together with Rondine Cittadella della Pace, responds to the need to make a concrete gesture to spread a culture of peace, and aims to draw attention to the message of these young people, who have experienced hatred, armed conflict and the deception of the enemy. These relate not only to older conflicts that the pandemic seems to have dangerously brought back on the international scene, but also completely new conflicts that lacerate global society.

For this reason, the young people of Rondine today are once again asking States to sign the Appeal for Peace of the Leaders for Peace campaign: for a concrete commitment in the training of young leaders of peace, able to intervene in the main contexts of conflict in the world; but also for the inclusion of the teaching and education of human rights in national education systems, integrated with the experiments of the Rondine Method on the creative transformation of conflicts, which has enabled them to become ambassadors of peace.

Support of the Catholic Church

Along with them are also leaders in the project Mediterranean Frontier of Peace, supported by the Italian Bishops' Conference and carried out in collaboration with Caritas Italiana and Rondine Cittadella della Pace, which calls on them to design projects of social impact in their dioceses, collaborating to develop networking actions throughout the Mediterranean.

Rondine Citadella della Pace

Founded in 1998 by Franco Vaccari, Rondine Cittadella della Pace is an organisation committed to the reduction of armed conflicts in the world and to the dissemination of its method for the creative transformation of conflicts (Rondine Method).

Through the International Studentate-World House, the association annually welcomes young people from countries that are experiencing or have lived through wars and conflicts. They go through two years of training and coexistence to discover the person in their "enemy" and become ambassadors of peace in their countries to contribute to the resolution of conflicts.

With its training courses, Rondine encourages young people to become leaders of themselves, of their communities and actors of change in civil society, in the continuous search for the common good. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the realization of a socially sustainable habitat free of armed conflict, in which each person has the tools to develop peaceful and generative relationships. In 2015, Rondine Cittadella della Pace has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.