How will you work?
We combine art, law and economics.
New dynamics for a shared vision of the future
I really believe that Covid-19 has strengthened the connections among us all and even further brought to light the spirit guiding us in wanting to stir people into exercising a true rebirth and into reforming the capitalist asset of our economy, which penalises man and nature and favours financialization.
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ‘Transforming our world”, with its 17 goals and 169 targets, aims at stimulating coherent interventions by the member states, by the single stakeholders and by civil society in a wise management of the three correlated economic, social and environmental dimensions to release the human race from the tyranny of poverty and social injustice, and to safeguard and care for our planet. The outbreak of Covid-19 and its spreading worldwide have reinforced the sense of vulnerability in individuals, the awareness of interdependency and of the connective element of relational dynamics, at the same time highlighting the systemic malfunctions of the globalization process. The ‘global challenge’ posed by the virus raises disconcerting questions. In many, it has created the awareness of a co-responsibility in perpetuating structural and behavioural unbalances that are gradually threatening the prosperity, the peace and the future of the new generations. And the reflection unavoidably leads to wondering how we can correct obvious injustices which are denying inalienable rights. The trinamic formula of the Third Paradise can and must provide the guidelines for the process of analysis and rebirth, and the Art of Demopraxy can trace a path to achieve the Goals of the 2030 Agenda for a Sustainable Development.
The pandemic might mark the beginning of an epochal change at planetary level, but we have to start from the bottom if we want to promote the acquisition of a set of suitable knowledge, skills and values in the citizens, and in particular the younger ones. Our scientific and technological capabilities must pursue a balanced relationship between man and nature. Adopting a sustainable development model means achieving a dynamic balance between the three dimensions (social, economic and environmental) and therefore between different values (economic growth, social equality, ecological integrity). Our choices mirror our judgements of value and can’t be faced by experts with the help of technical instruments only, they must originate from a process of awareness, participation and sharing. A sustainable development1* is therefore a development participated with the institutions to prevent the impoverishment of the resources, social unbalances and highly critical situations for health, work or welfare.
The capitalistic system must be reformed in respect of a re-evaluation and observance of the common goods – both environmental and cultural – i.e. the free and shared resources that the individual has access to as member of the community and is obliged to preserve for the present and future collectivity. Only through a careful management of the resources we can provide future generations with the opportunity to satisfy their needs. In this historical moment is more than ever necessary to establish operational economic systems which ensure the respect of the common goods and the regard for the social costs of the productive process with the regular inclusion of all the negative externalities (climate change is an obvious example of negative externality). To guarantee a qualitative growth built around the 17 Goals, which are universal, indivisible and innovative, we necessarily need to define a clear conceptual frame leading to a wise integration of economically valid, ecologically sustainable and socially equal solutions.
The pandemic has devastated the world of work, causing huge human sufferings and showing the extreme vulnerability of many millions of workers (female workers in particular) and of businesses. Billions of workers are at risk of losing their livelihood, and children and teenagers victim of child labour are more exposed to forms of exploitation and abuse. Young people, many of whom were already experiencing a difficult time in the job market before Covid-19, have seen their perspective worsening drastically. The most vulnerable and disadvantaged are always the ones hit the hardest and most cruelly. Losing the job is not only a financial issue, it deeply affects the dignity and the self-esteem of the individual, thus generating a negative impact far beyond the loss of salary. In the process of recovery and growth, work should constitute a priority, together with health. The International Labour Organization has just concluded the world summit Covid-19 and the world of work – Building a better future of work, a high-level platform for government representatives, employers, workers and other subjects, to face the economic and social consequences of the pandemic. The object of the discussion: the challenges and the responses of the member states to the Declaration for ILO’s Centenary on the future of work.
“The Declaration acknowledges that the world of work is going through a transformation under the influence of technological innovation, demographic evolution, climate change and globalization. It sets a schedule so that the Organization and its three-parted constituents can define and direct these changes through an approach to the future of work centred on the individual, in a context in which poverty, inequalities, injustices, conflicts and disasters continually threaten the sharing of prosperity and the opportunity of dignified work for everybody. The Declaration stresses the need to strengthen everyone’s abilities in order to allow everybody to benefit from work changes, and the reinforcing of work institutions, so as to guarantee appropriate protection to all workers and promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable growth, full productive occupation and dignified work for everybody. It also highlights the determining role of international work regulations and of social dialogue in promoting these objectives. The Centenary Declaration has been favourably welcomed at both national and international levels. In particular, the United Nations’ General Assembly has adopted a resolution acknowledging its fundamental relevance for the work of the United Nations’ network and is asking all its entities to consider integrating its contents in the United Nations’ Cooperation Framework for sustainable development”2*.
On 25th July 2019, the UN’s General Assembly had already urged the international community to intensify the efforts to eradicate forced and child labour and unanimously adopted a resolution declaring 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour3*. The resolution confirms the commitment of the member states for the 2030 Agenda “to take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”. The General Assembly asked the International Labour Organization to assume a leading role in its realization and invited the member states, the agencies part of the United Nations’ network, non-governmental organizations, civil society, single individuals and all the stakeholders to observe the International Year through activities “aimed at raising awareness of the importance of the eradication of child labour, and to share best practices in this regard”. Causes and consequences of child exploitation should be examined in depth to understand the correlation between the phenomenon and the deliberate search for profit of the international market, facilitated by the delocalization of the production. I hope that many Rebirth/Third Paradise Embassies support the appeal of the United Nations.
In the world, over 152 million children and teenagers are forced to work under general indifference. 73 million of them do dangerous and permanently damaging jobs4*. They are denied their right to play, to school, to love. They are children exposed to conditions that often irremediably compromise their physical and emotional development, their spiritual and social growth. Sharing the tragedy of poverty and ignored by the institutions, these children are vulnerable to falling prey to abuse, coercion and violence for the logics of profit and because of the silence of the consumers. What is produced through child exploitation lands on our markets, in our homes. Child labour is a complex phenomenon, expression of a globalized economy dominated by consumerism and financial speculation, leading to a delocalization of the production that facilitates illegal activities and huge profits for the few. Work is a right for adults the way education is a right for children and teenagers. Pre-Covid-19 estimates say that in the world over 200 million adults are unemployed and, paradoxically, 152 million children are denied their childhood because forced to work. Due to the pandemic, the world will have much higher levels of unemployment, inequality, poverty, debt and political frustration. This makes ever more obvious the fact that governments, both individually and collectively, must centre their recovery plans on the concept of ‘rebuilding better’ compared to how it was before.
Italy has a particular prerogative on the topic of labour as the Italian Constitution declares it as the fundamental element of the juridical system in the text of the Charter, i.e. the guidelines to which all public powers, including the legislative one, must conform, as they represent mandatory values of the system. The labourist principle (art. 1 and art. 4) places work and workers at the centre of the political, economic and social life of the country. Work is defined as a right, hence the expression “the Italian Republic is founded on labour”, and is also a duty as contribution to the “material and spiritual progress of society”6*.
2020 – 2021 programme
This is the starting scenario. The programme Giovani in azione of Alghero’s Rebirth/Third Paradise Embassy is active thanks to a strong partnership with the International Labour Organization, a long-lasting collaboration with the Faculty of Law, Architecture, Design and Urban Planning of the University of Sassari and with the University “delle Tre Età” in Alghero. Our links with the National Association of School Heads and with AsviS are extremely valuable resources.
We can’t be exempted from doing. We have a precious partnership, we have a group of effective elements ranging from art to international law, and the active involvement of designated institutions for the education of young people and teachers. All this on an island that can give character to the initiative by highlighting the culture and the beauty of the territory. It’s up to all of us to make operational a clear intention of innovating methods and contents in Sardinian schools of every type and grade, in order to activate creative energies in youths and motivation in teachers. The proposal is of a teaching model which encourages and promotes independent critical thought able to dismantle obsolete systems subject to demagogy, logics of power, the alluring exploitation of the ephemeral.
Due to the discontinuity of local politics following last year’s elections, we have temporarily suspended our activities with Alghero’s town council. The negotiations in progress for the restart of the programme require more time. The two cities where we have operated with the support of the institutions are Sassari and Nuoro. A great effort with gratifying results. Through the partnership with the celebrations for ILO’s Centenary (and in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda) the initiative Giovani in azione has actively involved thousands of students from schools of any type and grade both in Sassari and Nuoro. The exhibition of the Tela di Pinocchio (Pinocchio’s Canvas)7* in both city halls offered the opportunity of guided tours, to then analyse in depth, in the various schools/laboratories, the theme of exploitation and the relative economic and social implications, with the all important contribution of the teachers. On the strong basis of the cultural inheritance of Antonio Gramsci’s thought, summarized in the page Odio gli indifferenti (I hate the indifferent)8*, we produced the Manifesto for a sustainable future9* – both texts are at the end of the article, editor’s note – and, by signing the petition, the students have committed to a conscious participation.
Schools and universities are quintessential fertile grounds for the fostering of democracy, or better of demopraxy, and of productive knowledge. The inescapable and undelayable dictates of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 goals and 169 targets, offer a clear plan of action. The activities scheduled for 2019 and 2020, before the isolation imposed by Covid-19, have interested other areas of the island according to a plan designed to gradually involve all the schools and universities in Sardinia. The ‘educational model’ relies on art and law to get students to grow into active, responsible, critically spirited, industrious citizens able to drive change.
“If it is to succeed in its tasks, education must be organized around four fundamental types of learning which, throughout a person’s life, will in a way be the pillars of knowledge: learning to know, that is acquiring the instruments of understanding; learning to do, so as to be able to act creatively on one’s environment; learning to live together, so as to participate and co-operate with other people in all human activities; and learning to be, an essential progression which proceeds from the previous three. Of course, these four paths of knowledge all form a whole, because there are many points of contact, intersection and exchange among them”. Jacques Delors, “In education, a treasure”, “For a new world order”.
This educational process gives youths empowerment, a term that encapsulates a multi-faceted group of meanings. Empowerment means conferment of power, activation, making the most of one’s potential, emancipation to being the protagonist of one’s own life, at the same time being active and responsible in the community. Through the 2030 Agenda and the proclamation of the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, the United Nations invite the active participation of the younger people, expecting the school to offer effective instruments to make them actually drive change.
The post-Covid-19 recovery will be slow and gradual. The new activities of Giovani in azione will be planned and carried out in a cautious and realistic way. Schools always need innovation and devotion. Now more than ever. We will need to appropriately explore new territories in tracing the perspective of a path able to offer youths a special role that allows them to be protagonists of the whole process, from the planning to the realization, and to be able to combine the expressive power of art with the value of social commitment. The dominant topics – the 2030 Agenda, the Third Paradise, the Art of Demopraxy and the exploitation of child labour in particular – will be treated individually with teachers and students, to then be conveyed into activities with group dynamics10* and the involvement of families. Education, ethics and aesthetics are designed to contribute to the creation of human capital and stimulate true participation in the process of renewal. Through art and its prerogative in the development of an emotional and social intelligence, the commitment of the many youths involved will give fruitful returns in the communities they belong to in terms of activation of a collective conscience.
In carrying out the demanding process of renewal with Giovani in azione, we trust there will be the installation of a public work in the shape of the symbol of the Third Paradise in a yet-undefined place in Sardinia, to seal the ‘turning point’ with the fusion of values and methods for the ‘rebirth’ we wish for. This ambition and this design work as catalysts for the many energies stemming from the dialogue started with culture and art representatives at regional level, and with the community of Sardinian artists sensitive to change and very close to our project.
“An invitation to act to change our world”
Changing our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Excerpt from the Resolution of the United Nations’ General Assembly
Seventy years ago, an earlier generation of world leaders came together to create the United Nations. From the ashes of war and division they fashioned this Organization and the values of peace, dialogue and international cooperation which underpin it. The supreme embodiment of those values is the Charter of the United Nations.
Today we are also taking a decision of great historic significance. We resolve to build a better future for all people, including the millions who have been denied the chance to lead decent, dignified and rewarding lives and to achieve their full human potential. We can be the first generation to succeed in ending poverty; just as we may be the last to have a chance of saving the planet. The world will be a better place in 2030 if we succeed in our objectives.
What we are announcing today – an Agenda for global action for the next 15 years – is a charter for people and planet in the twenty-first century. Children and young women and men are critical agents of change and will find in the new Goals a platform to channel their infinite capacities for activism into the creation of a better world. “We the peoples” are the celebrated opening words of the Charter of the United Nations. It is “we the peoples” who are embarking today on the road to 2030. Our journey will involve Governments as well as parliaments, the United Nations system and other international institutions, local authorities, indigenous peoples, civil society, business and the private sector, the scientific and academic community – and all people. Millions have already engaged with, and will own, this Agenda. It is an Agenda of the people, by the people and for the people – and this, we believe, will ensure its success. The future of humanity and of our planet lies in our hands. It lies also in the hands of today’s younger generation who will pass the torch to future generations. We have mapped the road to sustainable development; it will be for all of us to ensure that the journey is successful and its gains irreversible.
Giovani in azione (attachment 1)
Manifest for a sustainable future
We the schools of Nuoro, the students, in celebrating the International Labour Organization’s Centenary,
– on the strong basis of the cultural heritage of Antonio Gramsci’s thought, summarized in the attached page Odio gli indifferenti (I hate the indifferent),
– motivated by the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,
– urged by the Resolution of the United Nations’ General Assembly for the institution of the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour (2021),
– supported by the guidelines of the Ministry of Public Education, University and Research published in A plan of 10 actions for a more open, inclusive and innovative school of the 31st January 2017,
we commit to promoting a petition that translates into a partnership between schools, regional and national institutions and the territory, so as to generate short- and long-term implementational procedures able to feed the critical and operational spirit of each student, in pursuit of the protection of child rights and the respect of the imperative of sustainability as a guarantee of qualitative growth.
In each school, students will sign the petition and will be appropriately informed so that they can consciously and gradually adhere to the initiative of international nature. On 9th November, the Tela di Pinocchio will be put on display at the Palace of Justice and the initiative Giovani in azione will be formally launched in the presence of the competent authorities.
I hate the indifferent (attachment 2)
“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.
The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened? I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.
I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”
Antonio Gramsci, 11th February 1917
Sustainable development and I (attachment 3)
Living with style. Let’s make a difference
I examine my behavioural model and wonder:
How do I contribute to sustainable development in each of the three contexts?
Economy – How do I spend my money? Do I waste, save or capitalize my resources? Am I aware that my purchases drive the supply chain and affect work, the respect of rights, pollution, exploitation, etc.? Do I research information on the provenance of the products?
Society – What do I offer in my daily habits, in my relating to others? What’s my contribution? How do I contribute to the production of common good? Is my behaviour constructive, able to produce well-being, intellectual and social growth? How do I manage my emotions? How do I express my willingness? What do I do for my town, my school, my family?
Environment – How do I relate to nature and to my natural and social environment in my daily life? Am I aware that any of my choices have an impact, that my doing or not doing leaves a trace (see Lorenz theory)? Am I part of the solution or of the problem?
‘Living with style’ means acquiring knowledge of the unbalances causing or further threatening sustainable development. It means being aware of the value of our choices and not following passively the conditionings of blind consumerism. It means stimulating critical thought, creativity and social commitment with a glocal approach, both in ourselves and in others (think global act local). It means refusing the dictates of profit and money and being outraged by the co-existence of extreme poverty and arrogant riches. It means further and actively expressing our civil commitment to spreading awareness through initiatives conveying these values to the surrounding community. “It is up to us, to all of us together, to ensure that our society remains one to be proud of. A man is a true man only when he is really committed and responsible”11*.
