Chi siamo

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The Janusz Korczak ODV Volunteer Association, previously called “Piedmont Volunteer Association “Janusz Korczak” - and until June 2006 “Janusz Korczak Italian Association, Piedmont Section” - was established in Vercelli in the spring of 1987.
Its establishment coincided with the naming of the state nursery school in Piazza Mazzini in Vercelli after Janusz Korczak. The aims of the Association are indicated in theArticle 3 of the Statute, to which we refer you for reading.
The early years of the Association's life - of reflection on its own identity and on the potential and feasibility of planning activities and the ability to bring together different ideas and forces - were characterized by the need to address two preliminary problems:
a) establish relationships with local authorities, with school management, and with information bodies, overcoming the difficulties and resistance deriving from the fact that the name, figure, and works of Janusz Korczak were completely unknown;
b) identify the initiatives to be implemented, while at the same time attempting to propose a "new way" of positioning oneself and operating in the social context, soliciting collaborative relationships for shared purposes.
In the following years, necessarily gradually, with diversified experimental activities, stimulating and obtaining the participation of not only local bodies and associations, but the Association was also characterized by its programs aimed at children's education and the promotion of their rights, considering it indispensable the priority of commitment towards childhood, the elective age in which the personalities from which subsequent adolescent and adult behavior will derive are formed. Not understanding or not wanting to understand this or, even, betraying the trust of girls and boys, means being incapable of hypothesizing and planning a future society truly on a human scale, as solemnly sanctioned in the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights".
Therefore, working for the recognition "in practice" of the rights of every girl and boy should be the constant stimulus of every adult, proceeding from the fundamental right left to us as a categorical imperative by Janusz Korczak:
                                             “Every girl and boy has the right to be citizens
                                                                      recognized, listened to, and respected".

 

Article 3 of the Association Statute:

The non-profit Piedmont Volunteer Association Janusz Korczak, referring to the pedagogical teaching and the moral, civil, and scientific message of Janusz Korczak - doctor, educator, writer, politically persecuted, and martyr, as well as the inspirer of the Charter of Children's Rights - pursues the following purposes:

• It promotes the concrete recognition of the rights of girls and boys, as subjects of the right to protection, listening, and respect;

• Plans and implements initiatives aimed at the education of childhood and adolescence, with particular reference to environmental education, understood in the broadest sense of the term, and civic education;

• It promotes relationships of mutual knowledge and exchange between educational institutions, both regional, national, and international, and collaborates with bodies, institutions, organizations, and associations  for the planning and implementation of targeted and shared projects;

• It plans and implements studies and research on the conditions of childhood and adolescence, as well as professional updating and training activities for teaching staff, and awareness-raising initiatives for more correct and concrete attention to the rights of children and adolescents.