Kampala, 2002. Kizito and Robert were teaching at a private high school. They had encountered CL a while back and went regularly to School of Community. But in the classroom, something was off. The conception of school and education was limited to lectures; no one paid much attention to the students themselves, so long as they memorized facts, even under threat of physical punishment. How could they translate their experience of the Movement to the classroom? The proposal they received was, “Let’s get together to read Fr. Giussani’s The Risk of Education.” It came from Clara Broggi and Giovanna Orlando, two Memores Domini living in Africa and managing a number of educational projects for the Italian NGO AVSI.

“That became our first ‘professional development course’ for educators. From that one up to the latest with the officials of the Jordanian Ministry of Education, we’ve met over 25,000 people all over Africa [and beyond].” The speaker is Mauro Giacomazzi, from Mantua, Italy, who went to Kampala to work for AVSI in 2007. He witnessed the birth and growth of the Permanent Centre of Education, now called the Luigi Giussani Institute for Higher Education, where he currently works. “It’s an institution of higher learning where we provide formation for teachers and organize continuing education courses for them. With that book always as a guide.” The “book” being the educational method that Giussani fi rst set down on paper in 1977, summarizing his experience as a teacher and educator. “Education is a communication of one’s self, of the way one relates to reality,” wrote the founder of CL, describing a journey in which students and teachers are called to put all their freedom into play.

“Words that are still alive today, 40 years later,” Giacomazzi says, thinking about his latest trip to Jordan a few weeks ago after a request “through AVSI to hold a course on highly Education. I was expecting it to be the usual staffers and functionaries, but all the top officials were there. I did a presentation on what we do, about The Risk of Education, and the topics I would cover. ‘We’re interested in the first part. We don’t want to forget any of what you told us at the beginning, that’s what we need,’ they told me.” At the end of the course, which was basically Fr. Giussani’s method, one official, an expert in the psycho-social aspects of education with her hair covered by a veil, shook his hand. “A Muslim woman, shaking hands with a man.... She thanked me, telling me how much she learned about her work.” Now the Ministry has decided to add the course as a standard part of the professional development of their teachers.

But to understand what’s happening in Jordan, we have to go back to 2002, when Kizito and Robert asked to enlarge the gatherings to include their colleagues. “It was a brief interactive ‘training’ on the book, using visuals and film clips to accompany topics such as ‘tradition,’ ‘authority,’ ‘personal verification,’ and ‘freedom.’” In 2005, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum decided to support the initiative and the number of courses grew. “Then AVSI decided to support and ‘use’ our courses in their work,” Mauro says. But they needed to get better organized. This is where the idea of the Permanent Centre of Education (PCE) came in–“a center with the goal of proposing to everyone the challenge Giussani describes in The Risk of Education; in the words of the Austrian theologian Jungmann, that education be ‘an introduction to total reality.’”

The Centre started in 2009. “We had a budget of just over 5,000 euros. It was me, Clara, and two other ‘facilitators’ in a brand-new building not far from the shore of Lake Victoria.” The only one missing was Giovanna, who had passed away the year before from a tumor.

The same value.
What they presented was revolutionary for the African conception of teaching. “Not only that. The idea of the value of the person in these societies is also lacking.” The profession of teaching is often underpaid and considered to have little dignity. “So, before getting into all the technical aspects of teaching, you first start helping them to understand that the child has the same desires and the same value that you have. And education isn’t just inculcating concepts, as you find in the programmatic documents from the Ministry; it’s helping the person to flourish.” Nothing can be taken for granted. “Sometimes we have to start with why it’s important to take students’ attendance at the beginning of the lessons. Very few do so, and it’s hard to find teachers that know the names of all their students,” Mauro explains.



The PCE continued to grow over time, spreading beyond Kampala, to South Sudan, in the Education Department at the diocesan university in Juba, St. Mary’s; to the Dadaab refugee camp on the border with Somalia in northeastern Kenya, in order to train Muslim teachers as part of AVSI programs there. And then to Congo, Myanmar, Rwanda... “We’ve always followed things as they happened,” Mauro continues. Like the time two new factors intersected in the life of the PCE. On the one hand, there was the request of many women at Meeting Point International in Kampala, an association that grew out of the initiative of Rose Busingye, a nurse in CL who provides a place of welcome and help for women living with AIDS. The women wanted to have a school where their children could grow up within the same experience they were living. “On the other hand, we needed a place that would give continuity and concreteness to what we were doing at the PCE,” Giacomazzi interjects. “So that we could learn on the ground, get feedback and try out new things.” This led to the founding of Luigi Giussani elementary and high school, serving over 1,000 students in the Kireka neighborhood of Kampala.

“Right in The Religious Sense, Fr. Giussani gives a definition of the word ‘problem’ from the Greek: ‘something before one’s eyes.’ This is the challenge we face. One day at a time, we try to respond to the situations reality brings to us, beginning with the experience we have in the classroom.” This happened at the Luigi Giussani school, as well as in other institutions that have been founded within the experience of the Movement, for example the schools in Nairobi, Kenya, and those in Nigeria. “This is the road to discovering new didactic methods and innovative ways of approaching the material. Always focused on the goal of building up the relationship between educators and students, as Giussani intended. Pedagogy, the classroom, becomes an instrument to reach the hearts of the boys and girls.”

Somewhere along the way, the Ugandan Ministry started to notice the PCE and recognize the value of its work. “They asked us to become accredited as an official teacher training institute and to change our name. They themselves, seeing that the center was dedicated to him, suggested Fr. Giussani’s name,” Mauro says. It was a third level: elementary, high school, and now courses at a university level to earn a teaching license. “Why limit ourselves to training them once they’re already working?”

And this brings us up to the present. With a significantly larger budget, 17 employees including trainers, administrators, and various other staff members, and supported by AVSI and other partners, including the American Notre Dame University. “We’re offering courses and running projects all over Africa. We’ve also started to do research studies to document the results our approach has on students–at the academic level, but also at the human level. And on how faith can have an impact. It’s evident: our students at Luigi Giussani are happy to come to school, they work hard and get good results, and even their families are changed. They’re more open, undaunted in the face of all life brings, which is a trait that’s difficult to find in Africa, where their questions have often been suppressed from the time they were little.” One American benefactor, on his visit to help fund a few projects, recognized this. “I’ve never seen kids talk so passionately about what they do, about themselves, and about their school,” he said.

Touching The heart.
A number of years ago, the PCE was contacted by a foundation in Washington, DC. “We met, they approved the grant, but then we didn’t hear from them again.” For two years, Mauro and his team used the donation for their work. Then, almost out of the blue, the group sent a representative. “She was of African origin. We had prepared a little presentation on the second floor, but the electricity for the elevator was out, and she was disabled.” They moved everything downstairs. Little by little, the woman’s face, which had been clouded by impatience at some setbacks, started to change. To the point of being deeply moved: “You know, Mauro, when people talk about education in Africa, it makes me cry because everyone thinks there’s no hope. But today, I saw hope,” she confided in him.

“When you touch the heart of a person, you never know what might happen,” Mauro went on to say. “I’ll always carry with me the words of a teacher the day after one of our courses in South Sudan. She told me how, the night before, as she got home, she saw her five-year-old son running like crazy toward the house. She told me, ‘He knew that if he had got there after me, I would spank him. Instead, I saw him and I told him to go back outside to play, and that I’d call him in for dinner. He obeyed because he was afraid, but I would like for him to love me.’”