MEDES Closing Event and future perspectives

SACILE. 29 – 31 May 2018. The MEDES Week, that started on the 29^th of May, closed yesterday with huge success. All the partners took part in the events organized under the direction of the Municipality of Sacile and Municipality of Villareal, MEDES project leader. During the events, it was possible to show the great results obtained from the project which developed an innovative methodology of Mediation, conflict resolution and prevention of bullying and early school leaving phenomena. Satisfaction and enthusiasm were expressed by the two partner schools, Balliana Nievo School of Sacile and IES Miralcamp. Indeed, the 3-day closing event coincided with the exchange week of the Spanish students in Italy.

High profile guests and speakers led several workshops with more than 500 accredited people. In particular, the audience warmly applauded the speech given by Mrs. Jacqueline Morineau, founder of the Humanistic Mediation methodology. On the 31th of May, the mayor of the Municipality of Sacile, Mr. Carlo Spagnol, and the mayor of the Municipality of Villareal, Mr. José Benlloch Fernández, handed the “MEDES Seal” to the two partner schools at the end of the evening show at Zancanaro Theatre, as a result of the high-quality training carried out throughout the project.

The numbers of MEDES are quite impressive: among the others, 20h of humanistic mediation training in Sacile managed by the social cooperative ITACA, 25h of school training in Villareal, under the direction of El Porc Espì Association, 2 awareness meetings in Sacile (with 60 school teachers involved), the involvement of 10 Italian students and 10 Spanish students which took part in the exchange programme, the final development of the “MEDES toolkit” that is freely available at http://medes.vila-real.es/.

The project partners are now at work for MEDES 2.0. During the closing event it was reaffirmed the importance of MEDES both for the Municipality of Sacile and Municipality of Villareal and great interest in participating in future projects was expressed by the representatives of the Municipality of La Rèole (France) and Novigrad-Cittanova (Croatia). This lays the foundation for the prosecution of the project in 2019.