The founding idea of the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation is based on the then widespread idea of ensuring lasting peace through nations meeting and communicating on an educational level. The aim of the League of Nations of Children was to practice peaceful coexistence in Trogen and thus show the world that peace can be learned by example.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is celebrating its 30th birthday this year – reason enough to approach the topic of youth and peacebuilding from this perspective. The preamble of the CRC states that “the child should be fully prepared to live an individual life in society, and brought up in the spirit of the ideals proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, and in particular in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality, and solidarity.” This spirit of peace or the creation of a culture of peace is also enshrined in UNESCO and other UN agencies’ documents and is declared in the SDG 4.7 as a criterion for quality education for all to be achieved by 2030. It is clear that education does not lead to peace per se. However, the right educational content and child-friendly pedagogy undoubtedly contribute to peaceful coexistence. In 1944, Corti was certain of this against the backdrop of World War II. The projects of the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation (SKP) in Switzerland and abroad still embody this conviction today.
“If the kingdom of heaven is within us, we will find it only if we learn from children as we teach them.”
Walter Robert Corti, August 1944 issue of “Du”
In the last quarter of a century, the Pestalozzi Children’s Village has developed from a village for orphans of war and refugee children to an international meeting place for intercultural exchange. In 2018 alone, well over 2,000 children and young people from Switzerland and 18 other European countries visited the Children’s Village in Trogen and took part in various types of exchange projects.
As part of its Swiss program, the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation provides non-formal education. Looking at the department of leisure, you can see that the informal area of education is also addressed, with a youth club based on free youth work existing in the Children’s Village. The Children’s Village as a whole functions as a protected learning lab. Education is understood as a dynamic process of acquiring knowledge, skills, and competences which enables and strengthens learners to adopt a value-based attitude and to change their own behavior in a way that allows conflicts to be resolved without violence.
The project work is based on three principles: An awareness of the self and the world among the participating children and adolescents within the framework of group dynamic educational work with the dialogical pedagogy methods. The content focuses on intercultural and political education, dealing with social diversity, and media literacy. In accordance with Article 12 CRC, topics are determined with the participation of the children. Four overarching goals are to be achieved: critical and reflected self-determination, solidarity and a commitment to sustainability, the ability to react and resist, and the ability to articulate and non-violent forms of articulation among the participating children and adolescents. This covers all essential areas identified in UN Resolution A/52/243 as fields of activity for the promotion of a culture of peace.
Considering these requirements for a culture of peace, the statement that children are our future is more than a platitude. Those who learn at an early age to see diversity as an opportunity and strangers as a source of enrichment will be less willing as adults to accept violence as a mode of conflict. The SKP’s intercultural exchange projects offer preventive peacebuilding by initiating developments with individuals who are then likely to mature into peaceful personalities who stand up for their values and are committed to peaceful coexistence.
