The aim of the project is to stimulate students of second grade secondary schools with Italian or Slovenian as the teaching languages of the province of Trieste to reflect on the sense that a hundred years ago and today had and have the efforts for preventing wars and searching peaceful solutions to conflicts as regards cultural and linguistic contacts. The main objective is to stimulate students to reflect on peace culture and thus make their awareness grow on how understanding past dynamics can turn out useful for understanding our present.
This will be pursued with a multilevel work:
o The first phase, that of the Great History, is dedicated to introducing to the students some of the most important efforts, although failed, for interrupting WW1: the socialist conferences in Zimmerwald in 1915, the repetead appeals for peace of pope Benedetto XV and the secret attampts of emperor Charles I, successor of Franz Joseph, for making Austro-Hungary exit WW1.
o The second phase is going to be oriented to the local area, and it will involve students in a more direct way: with laboratory activities they will be stimulated to reflect on the meaning of war repudiation. At the same time, the students will be asked to collect testimonies, documents, letters and photographs of their relatives, particularly grandparents.
o The project will close with a symbolic event: a walk from the area of Duino/Devin and Sistiana/Sesljan to Doberdò del Lago/Doberdob, where for more than 2 years (1915-1917) the front had divided different areas of our region.
All in all, the project will comprise 5 meetings during the schoolyear 2016/2017; the participants will be from 60 to 80 students of the fourth and fifth grade of second grade secondary schools in Trieste, which are all project partners.
In 2016, the first 2 meetings took place: 1) an introductory meeting in November with speeches by dr. Š. Čok and G. Bajc in Tessitori hall in Trieste; 2) a meeting in December in the Carlo and Vera Wagner Museum of the Jewish Community of Trieste, during which the theme dealt with was that of refugees from WW1 to today.