Sustainable development
L’Albero della Vita is an International organisation involved in the framework of human development.
In September 2015 was divulged the document “Transformingour world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development” reporting the sustainable development purposes ratified in New York by the United Nation Summit and immediately welcomed by the Swiss Confederation.
They are goals the Foundation adherescompletely and unconditionallyand around which it builds its activity, starting from its specific vision and understanding of phenomena, problems, their causes, possible solutions and best approaches.
We list here the 17 goals, giving more space to the increasingly important environmental themes:
1. Eradicate poverty in all its forms and everywhere in the world
2. Put an end to hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Ensure a healthy life and promote the well-being of everyone at all ages
4. Ensure inclusive and fair quality education and promote opportunities for lifelong learning for all
5. Achieve gender equality and self-determination for all women and girls
6. Ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation measures for all
7. Ensure access to energy at affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern price for all
8. Promote sustainable, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full employment and decent work for all
9. Build a resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and support innovation
10. Reduce inequalities within and between countries
11. Make cities and villages inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production models
13. Take urgent measures to fight climate change and its consequences *
14. Preserve and use oceans, seas and marine resources in a sustainable way
15. Protect, restor and promote a sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainable management of forests, face desertification, halt and reverse land degradation and halt the biodiversity loss.
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies oriented at a sustainable development, ensuring access to justice for all and building effective, responsible and inclusive institutions at all levels
17. Strengthen implementation modalities and re-launch the global partnership for sustainable development.
Human progress and social growth
The final aim of L’Albero della Vita is to contribute to human progress and social growth. The foundation commitment is to intend and project all its activities based on the primary values ratified by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and after, in 1989, by the International Convention of Youth and Adolescence Rights:
• to promote the person development, his deepest needs, his rights and potential, his ability to choose, to have a leading role in his life and actively participate in social life;
• promote at every social level the paradigm “vita tua, vita mea”, stimulating peaceful coexistence, collaboration, cooperation, mutual help, networking, a mixture of different knowledge, approaches and disciplines;
• knowledge of the social contexts in which we move, of the distinctive characteristics, problems and potentials;
• the construction of projects, the definition of partnerships, the search for resources and synergistic structures;
• the creation of social bonds and meeting spaces where individuals rediscover the sense of belonging and develop collective forms of resilience;
• the growth of specific social skills in the field of relational communication: confrontation and cooperation.
Central abilities to operate in an interpersonal space where social connections arise.
L’Albero della Vita promotes social cohesion and support as a privileged tool of growth, emphasizing the participation of children and young people, encouraging the growth of knowledge, awareness, attitudes and skills; encouraging proactive behavior.
In the relationship with institutions, organizations and companies which have a significant impact on the community, the Foundation focuses its activity of advocacy in the field of social responsibility:
• promote social development as empowerment of individuals and growth of human capital;
• recognize and stimulate in communities social cohesion, the constitution of informal networks, solidarity between people and mutual aid;
• promote a preventive approach to social problems by encouraging the use of resources;
• enhance and support the work of organizations specifically dedicated to the promotion of qualitative models, the establishment of work networks, partnerships between profit and non-profit world;
• give to young people areas of social participation where they can grow aware of the issues, express hidden potentials, build proposals, participate in the political process for all the questions directly and indirectly linked to their present and their future.
Childhood is the focus
The child has a leading role in human and social development. In this tension to improvement, the child is a gift from the future, the bearer of a renewal demand.
This is the life that gave the L’Albero della Vita its name, this vitality, this innocence, this ability to be modeled in the encounter with the new and the best, this ability to move and change that sees in the adult an attentive audience, a warrantor, a guardian, a facilitator.
The Foundation has chosen to work in favor of childhood by dedicating projects and campaigns in order to promote child recognition, the sacredness of his personal and his social potential, working hard to let it flow, working essentially for the creation or restoration of external and interiors conditions necessary for this potential to be fully expressed again.
The social activity for disadvantaged children persues the goals mentioned above acting:
• With the minor, for him to know and understand himself completely
• with families and communities they belong in order to recognize a central value in childhood
• in accordance with the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Adolescence (CRC) and in particular with the principles of non-discrimination (Article 2), the best interests of the minor (Article 3), right to life, survival, development (Article 6), participation and respect for the child’s opinion (Article 12).
With reference to the political-institutional sphere, L’Albero della Vita is committed in contexts where it operates through laws, policies, institutional practices and an appropriate allocation of resources to:
• recognize the central role of social policies in favor of children, primarily in social and educational field and in all areas of policies (economic, urban, housing, etc.) that have an impact on children and young people lives
• make unavoidable interventions in favor of disadvantaged minors in need of social protection; recognise the centrality of the family as a privileged place for children growth
•promote a multi-sectoral approach in the perspective of children well-being
• favor a cultural blooming attentive to childhood and its peculiarities in places where culture, information and research are promoted.
Education as key tool
The social activity of L’Albero della Vita focuses on change as a lever for minors and their families well-being promotion. According to “Pedagogy for the Third Millennium” education is a process aimed at stimulating the development of individual potentials as a path that concerns every area of life (life-wide), and which does not end in childhood but lasts for a lifetime (life-long).
Starting from the definition of the World Health Organization in 1983, the life skills sphere defines the concept of health as a continually evolving psycho-physical and relational well-being and focus on a core of life skills:
• decisionmaking, problemsolving
• creative thinking, critical thinking
• effective communication, interpersonal relationships
• management of emotions, empathy
• stress management, resistance
L’Albero della Vita’s educational programs are aimed primarily at social outcasted children and young people and aim to turn discomfort into opportunity. Even starting from social disadvantaged contexts, the educational commitment intends to encourage children and young people to play a leading role in society, working on the skill to take on responsibility, building and facilitating participatory processes, promoting cooperative learning, peer education, debate education and any useful method and tool to promote the child democratic growth and the earning of a proactive role.
Starting from the assumption that every man is an educator since he is a witness and promotor of his own orientation in life, the Foundation is committed to:
• Recognize the central value of education as a key tool for social growth and human development;
• Ensure every child and every young adult the right to education in every context regardless of his skills, sex, religion or social condition
• Support family and school commitment by dedicating resources and strategies to the promotion of parents’ role and skills and to the support of teachers’ work at understanding their educational function beyond formative