WHERE THE BORDER STANDS FROM WAR AMBULANCES TO INTERCULTURAL EXCHANGES

The worth of dialogue with people who come from other cultural traditions was the first important discovery of the ambulance drivers at the front. It led them to care for the wounded on all sides in the war and then to create university exchanges between France and the United States. The practice of intercultural dialogue is the first training experience that is offered today to the students who leave home and to the families who receive them in their homes as new children for long periods of time. As this story unfolds, it is perhaps the border that emerges as something to question – the political borders that the American Field Service ambulance drivers crossed in two world wars, and the cultural and ideological borders overcome by students, schools, and families that answered the call of AFS. Today, more than ever, the insight of Jacques Delors still holds true, that "the challenge for education today" consists in: learning to live together by developing an understanding of others and their history, traditions, and spiritual values, and, on this basis, creating a new spirit which, guided by the recognition of our growing interdependence and a common analysis of the risks and challenges of the future, would induce people to implement common projects or to manage the inevitable conflicts in an intelligent and peaceful way.

The story that this book tells winds through the adventures of a century old volunteer organization created in France by Americans to save the war wounded, an organization that became a movement for education, peace and intercultural dialogue. These pages recall the events and the people who have imagined, supported, built and transformed an organization into an exemplary project for positive globalization with worldwide reach.

Roberto Ruffino has been the Secretary General of Intercultura since 1967 and of Fondazione Intercultura since 2007. He is a well known expert in the field of intercultural education and he has been rewarded with an honorary PHD in Education Science by the University of Padua in 2008 and with the Senior Interculturalist Award by SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research). He has worked with UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the European Commission on international pupil exchanges and he is the honorary President of EFIL (European Federation for Intercultural Learning).
Stefania Chinzari is a journalist, writer, and educator. She worked at the culture and the performing arts section of the news-paper l'Unità and contributes to a number of magazines and broadcasts (marie claire, Flair, Radio3Suite, www.tamtamcinema.it). She is the author of texts for interactive installations and museum exhibitions. Her books include Il teatro in contropiede (Bulzoni, 1993) and Nuova scena italiana (Castelvecchi, 2000). After delivering lectures at the Istituto Europeo di Design and the University of Cassino, currently she teaches at the Steiner-Waldorf school in Rome.