Summer School 8th to the 12th July 2024 – Climont
The Summer School was organized by the European SPES Institute for Spirituality in Economics and Society and ABC-Climont. 10 young adults from Hungary, Ukraine, Germany and France met around the question of how to engage for peace and human rights, which are under the threat of populism, nationalism and war today.
The participants shared their different experiences and interests: economics, social work for peace, the arts, political science, law and ecology. This interdisciplinary and multicultural meeting provided an opportunity to change perspectives, try out new strategies, open up new narratives, and find inspiration and motivation for commitment and hope.
We chatted, cooked, had a lot of very nice meals and watched two football matches together. We visited the Albert Schweitzer Museum in Gunsbach and went up into the mountains to see the First World War trenches in the Munster valley. The Alsace Moselle Memorial in Schirmeck taught us that reconciliation is possible, and the former Natzweiler concentration camp reminded us of the horrors of fascism. On the way back, we visited the nearby farm, where the vegetables we had enjoyed during the summer school are grown. Another – essential and local – way of engaging for life!
And we exchanged with the following speakers:
Bernd Hardbeck-Pingel, Professor at the Friedensakademie Freiburg, opens the discussions with a talk on « I choose not to be indifferent »: We find ourselves in a landscape that can be read in multiple ways, in relation to war, defence and peace, religious non-conformism, multilingualism, the renewal and exhaustion of Christianity, the organisation of urban and rural life, the development of space through deforestation and industrialisation...
And what a chance we had! Sasha Romantsova, the executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties in Kiev, spend a part of her holidays, joining us from Monday till Wednesday. She presented her engagement for human rights and how she came to work for CCL. Together we read their lecture for the Nobel Peace Price they got in 2022. Together we watched the documentary film 20 days in Mariupol.
Alfonso Zardi, who worked for the Council of Europe, explained us the important role the Council of Europe plays on the European continent to protect human rights,
democracy and the rule of law.
Chris Doude van Troostwijk, Professor in philosophy and theology at the Luxemburg School for religion and society and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, introduced us in the thinking of Albert Schweitzer, who was the Nobel Peace Price Laureat in 1952. He helped us think his principal of Reverence for Life and be aware of fallacies in our ways of thinking.
The last day, we discussed potential sources for facilitating disarmament and preventing the further worsening of the climate crisis with József Veress from Corvinus University of Budapest. He presented to us sources of the frequently untapped power of civil society and various non-mainstream models of economics.
And then it was time to go…
Sasha gave us a little homework: start writing your own Nobel Peace price speeches!
Gergö, Linn, Mariia, Milena, Nathan, Olena, Oleksii, Péter, Péter and Ulysse are sharing their first drafts with you!
Mariia’s poem *
О человеческой природе не могу найти ответ…
Бывает, маленький ребёнок, а уже великий человек,
С большой душой и добрым сердцем.
Умеет искренне любить.
Не бросит злобный фразой-перцем.
И жаждет зависть победить.
Во тьме он видит лучик солнца,
Росточек счастья в хмурый день.
В любой душе найдёт оконце
К стране прощения людей.
Не каждый взрослый понимает
такой талант смотреть на мир.
Когда не ненависть съедает,
А слышен голос веры лир.
У всех, ведь, с детства чистый разум,
И лишь того жизнь не затмит,
Кто в душе, как по приказу
Человека сохранит.
I can’t find the answer to human nature.
A small child can be a great fellow creature.
With a great soul and kind heart,
Don’t throw an evil phrase that cut.
He’s able to genuinely dearness,
Tries to score un envy in earnest.
In the darkness he sees the ray of the sun
In any soul will find a little canal
To country of people’s forgiveness,
On a gray day will show a dawn of happiness.
Not every adult is able to sense
Such a Tallent to live in the universe,
When not consumed by hatred,
When the voice of faith can be heard.
Everyone since the childhood has the pure mind,
But only those a spirit will find,
Who understands that he anytime must
A great person in a soul to hold in trust.
* Each morningsession we started with a poem or a text. Mariia proposed us one of her poems
ABC-Climont 