Italian Ngo Rondine is back at UN headquarters with the proposal of a Global Leaders School

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 6 – Reduce armed conflicts in the world through the education of future global peace leaders. This is the ambitious goal of the proposal of a Global Leaders School that the Italian Ngo Rondine Cittadella della Pace (Citadel of Peace) brought to the attention of the United Nations: high-level training and specialization offer for students and young professionals from all over the world, in line with the sustainable development objectives of the UN 2030 Agenda 4.7 and 4 for quality, fair and inclusive education.

The new initiative was presented at the United Nations headquarters in New York during an event organized in collaboration with the Permanent Missions of Italy, Armenia and Jordan, the European Union Delegation to the United Nations, the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary General for Youth, OHCHR and the United Nations Department for Global Communication.

“One year after the launch of the Leaders for Peace Initiative, Rondine returns to United Nations to update its activities thanks to its main actors at play: the young students of the Citadel of Peace. They are tomorrow’s leaders. We are here to bring their proposals to tables that matter, those in which we decide how to face today’s challenges on a global level. Rondine is a source of inspiration and example because it places young people on center stage. Peace and peaceful coexistence are based upon openness to dialogue and understanding of one another; values ​​that these boys – despite having lived through dramatic experiences – have made their own through the Rondine method . Today, and precisely in these rooms, we are positively reminded of their importance”, stated Ambassador Mariangela Zappia, Italian Permanent Representative to the UN.

“For the first time in its history, Rondine is set at the center of an event promoted not only by our Country, but also by representatives of other Member States and UN agencies. This goes to show both the recognition and the strong potential expresses by the methodology it proposes. A potential also reconfirmed by the interest shown by the American and Canadian academic world “, said Franco Vaccari, President of Rondine Cittadella della Pace, adding: “We face a global challenge: to redesign the future of relationships between governments and society. A Challenge in which we want to involve countries by asking to support the Leaders for Peace Initiative and actively participate in the creation of the Global Leaders School in order to consolidate its effective educational tool. One open to the youth of all nationalities who wish to be trained as leaders in the field of politics, business and training”.

One year ago, exactly seventy years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Rondine’s young students launched at the UN in New York the  global “Leaders For Peace Initiative” by asking heads of state to allocate a symbolic amount of their defense budget – corresponding to the cost of one weapon – in order to finance peace leadership scholarships and set the specific focus on human rights, in their national education programs. After Italy’s commitment thanks to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s signature on the Leaders for Peace Initiative, Rondine intends to make its own method, based on twenty years of experience in educating the younger generation in conflict resolution, available to the world.

Before the event at the United Nations,  Vaccari brought the Metodo Rondine on tour in the most prestigious Canadian and American universities, including St. Michael’s College, University of Western Ontario and King’s College, Manitoba University, St. Paul’s College , in Canada, the George Mason University and the American University of Washington, the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation and the Center for Human Rights Research and, finally, Harvard University.

Overall, the objective is to build a leadership model that can become an effective instrument of peace as well as a model that responds to the specific global needs that will emerge from the reflection started at the United Nations working table. (@OnuItalia)