Training and Education

From December until Easter 2004, contributions will be collected at the AVSI Tents in all Italy. For information on American initiatives, contact AVSI USA, New York, tel and fax: (212)-490-8043; e-mail: avsiusa@avsi.org

Many people–in government, in politics, and average citizens–propose to better their country or even the world through political, economic, and social programs. We understand the reason: one is duty-bound to do everything possible to deal with the problems of his and all peoples. Nonetheless, the Church has always reminded us of the condition necessary for a political and social project to have a positive outcome for the people. In order for economic and political structures to change, first–or at the same time–human beings must change.

The truth of these statements is before everyone’s eyes. Christians like St John Bosco, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, or non-Christians like Sacharov and Gandhi, with their courageous witness, contagious example, and their works capable of responding to man’s needs, are at the source of peaceful improvement of the conditions of life of entire nations.

This is why there is nothing as revolutionary and effective as training a young person to seek the Truth and to experience it with other people, pursuing an ideal of human justice, either in a sincere religious search or in the companionship with God-made-Man in a Christian community.

Whoever is trained to the true and the good wants to study and become educated in order to know and to improve his own condition and that of his peers through work, business development, the democratic organization of the state, and the use of science and technology for peaceful and environmentally sound progress. The pairing of training and education is indispensable. Without training, the so-called investment in human capital, i.e., education, has a harder time translating itself into the development for everyone that is the only true instrument for progress among peoples. Without training, education and the use of science and technology risk triggering violence, dictatorship, and injustice.

We want to help the young people of the Third World who want to go to school and to the university so that they may become protagonists of their own development and change, both material and spiritual.

This is why this year’s AVSI (Association of Volunteers in International Service) Tents, continuing what has been done in recent years–“Training as the Prime Emergency” (2001 Tents) and “Vocational Training, the Road to Development” (2002 Tents)–will allocate the money collected for social situations in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe to award 100 scholarships to poor, deserving youths.

So as not to forget the worst emergency of this period, and in order to contribute to the human rebuilding of Iraq, part of the sum will be destined for three kindergartens in the area of Baghdad, which belong to the Iraqi Church and serve the entire population of the area: the House of the Child kindergarten run by the Church of the Chaldean Patriarchate, the Armenian kindergarten, and the Latin kindergarten in Dora, which all together minister to 300 children.