Every January 30, since 1964, the educational community around the world celebrates the School Day of Nonviolence and Peace, recognized by UNESCO in 1993, with the slogan “Universal Love, Nonviolence and Peace”. It is a day that invites us to renew our commitment to an education based on respect, justice, solidarity and peaceful coexistence.
The schools and educational presences of the Daughters of Jesus join this commemoration with the desire to continue sowing, especially in children and young people, a culture of peace that transforms daily life and our world wounded by so many forms of violence and lack of peace.
Educating for peace: a task that is born in everyday life
This day, which commemorates the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi‘s death, reminds us of the power of nonviolence as a path to personal and social transformation. The school – and every educational community – is called to be a space where we learn not only to know, but also to live in dialogue, mutual care and fraternity, recognizing the dignity of each person. Educating for peace means accompanying processes, opening spaces for listening and helping to discover that every gesture counts.
“There is no way to peace: peace is the way.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Peace: a call that challenges us today
More than ever, we feel the urgency to continue asking for peace. Although we celebrate it today in the school environment, we know that peace is not only an educational content or a specific date on the calendar: it is a daily call for all of us, a shared responsibility that runs through our decisions, relationships and ways of living in the world. In a context marked by conflicts, violence and inequalities, the yearning for peace becomes a clamor.
We recall that, a few months ago, the UISG called for a time of fasting and prayer for peace. fasting and prayer for peaceto which, as Daughters of Jesus, we united ourselves with simplicity and hope. At the beginning of this year, the Pope also invited us once again to be artisans of peace. artisans of peacecapable of disarming hearts and building bridges. This same yearning resounded strongly during the Creation Weekreminding us that peace with others is deeply linked to peace with creation and with ourselves.
Educating for peace, in the Daughters of Jesus’ own way of education
The Daughters of Jesus, in Our Own Way of Educating (NMPE), have made peace education explicit as one of the perspectives and values that are a clear consequence of our way of conceiving education and the person.
Educating for peace
Moved by the universal love that should characterize the Daughters of Jesus and that does not admit partiality with respect to different nations or groups of people, we emphasize education for peace. This becomes particularly necessary in a society, on the one hand, immersed in a culture of violence and aggression, and on the other, very sensitive to interpersonal conflicts, difficulties of coexistence at all levels and tensions and confrontations between peoples.
91. From our educational action, we intend to collaborate in the transformation of this culture of violence into a culture of peace; this implies:
– To renounce violence, lies and hatred and become fraternal beings who recognize the dignity and needs of others.
– To awaken and develop the spirit of love and non-violence in the students, in order to cooperate in the construction of a more fraternal, less violent and more peaceful world.
– To work together for the harmony of relations among men and peoples, based on love for others, whoever they may be, on freedom and justice, on the sincere recognition of cultural pluralism.
– To seek alternatives to come to see, think, say and do a peaceful world that seems as natural to us as our current reality of violence can sometimes seem to us.
A renewed commitment
May this day renew in each of us the commitment to educate, pray and work for peace, knowing that it is built in the small, in the everyday, in gestures of care, listening and reconciliation. Let us not lose hope. May the God of life grant us a meek and courageous heart to continue being sowers of peace.
