Servas Italy Youth visiting Aosta High School

During the last week end (1-2 December 2019) Servas Youth Italy was invited by a teacher of a Technical High school in Aosta town (mountain region close to the boundary with France) to meet the students.

The request was : to bring Servas Experience and to speak about “the meaning of being a European citizen”, included in a program that the school is developing to enlarge the culture/openness of the students, during the last years of High school, before starting University or job activity.

The Servas Team was made of 9 youngsters between 16 and 27 years old. (Aurora Boninelli, Aleksandra Zavialova, Sebastiano Foresti, Laura Rota, Lucia and Ester Poma, Irma Milanese, Clara Azzola).

They held 3 workshops for  3 groups of 60 students each, aged between 17-18 y.o.

The day before the workshop, they met the teacher and agreed with her the details of the program.

Program of the workshops (duration 110 minutes each workshop):

·         Introduction of Servas and Servas Youth Group activity (speech, pictures).

·         Waking-up/renovation of Europe, thanks to youth engagement. (Performance with dance/music/pictures/reading of a pacifist novel by Antonio Megalizzi, -a journalist aged 28, who died in a terroristic attack in Strasbourg).

·         Experience of Servas Youth at EYE-Strasbourg Parliament 2018 (pics and video), how can youngsters change/improve Europe and the respect for human rights in Europe (no walls, but bridges).

·         Introduction of an on-line team-game (kahoot, with questions on European Union ) .

·         Working in Groups, (6 groups of 10 students, with one/two servas youngsters as leaders) questions on:

o    which values are experienced in daily life (with reference to the social problems of the town, immigration from South Italy, low cultural level, emigration to France) and which values can be reported to European levels.

o   Do we feel Europeans ? how can we improve our being European (what is missing, which projects can be started, for ex. in the school..etc)

o   Which personal perspective /projects/limits in the close future (job, university, emigrating to France, staying in Italy..etc)

·         One person from each group explains shortly the group discussion in plenary meeting

·         Experience of Aleksandra Zavialova (26 y.o., youth group, ), born in Ucraine (house and family destroyed by Russian/Ukraine war , moving to Moldavia at 6 years old  and then to Italy at 16 years old – migration, roots and identity, citizenship, to be open mind  and to be international oriented, feeling “at home” with the help and  support by servas friends.

·         Summary of the workshop, the Values of Servas: (Luka's video from Youth Camp 2018 “what is Servas for you”).

The students and the teachers were deeply involved in the workshops and the discussions were carried on also in the following lessons/days in each class. Many questions and interests around Servas, and Servas Youth opportunities.

The next steps: in the near future the Students of the last year of High school want to build a working team to introduce a similar activity to the younger students.

This was, for us, the conclusion of 3 months preparation and the result was positive and energetic for everybody.

I think it is important to share this experience with you all, it could be an idea for other countries. Here are some pics.

A big hug from snowy North Italy :)!!

Raffaella Rota-  Peace Secretary (Servas Italy) and Youth & Families Coordinator (Servas International)

  _{Reading Workshop}

 _{Laura, holding a session}

  _{The Servas Youth team, taking a selfie with a Teacher}