Above photo under Creative Commons license:
Children of Peru in Narihuala, by Armando Lobos
Guillem Ramis was a primary schoolteacher in Majorca, Spain, for a large part of his life. Due to the arrival of new immigrants in the Balearic Islands he detected the need for cross-cultural education in order to avoid future outbursts of racism or xenophobia. He led the Ministry of Education of the Balearic Islands to set up a cross-cultural educational program for peace and cooperation in the year 2000 called Vivim Plegats (We Are Living Together), ideologically founded on the knowledge and practice of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, and on the Earth Charter. Guillem was relieved of his school-teaching position to be able devote his full attention to creating, organizing, and coordinating the Vivim Plegats program, which was world pioneer in adapting the Earth Charter for children young and old, translating it into the languages of the new immigrants, so that it would be accessible to young apprentices and their families. Some seventy schools incorporated the philosophy of cross-cultural education based on the Earth Charter and its influence transcended the island zone to reach different territories in Spain and in other countries, such as Portugal, Cuba, Japan, and Canada. (See a children’s adaptation of the Earth Charter.)
Having reached retirement age, Guillem has continued collecting, preparing, and spreading educational materials that can be used by other educators in their necessary work. Most of this work can be seen on the Web pages of Vivim Plegats (for the most part written in Catalan, the language of Majorca) and on the Web pages of the Earth Charter Initiative, based in Costa Rica.
See also:
International Children’s and Youth Conference Let’s Take Care the Planet, June 2010, organized with the involvement of the Charter of Human Responsibilities network.
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