At school of happiness and degrowth: Alice Project

Author: Gloria Germani

Alice Project is an intercultural and interreligious school that places self-knowledge and love for the world and every living creature at the center of its program. It was founded in 1994 in Sarnath, India, by Valentino Giacomin who, after having worked as a teacher in Italy, decided, together with Luigina De Biasi, to continue his educational and spiritual research in the Indian subcontinent. Since then, many schools have sprung up from the initiatives of students and "followers" in Italy, Germany, France and Taiwan, and the project has received the appreciation of the Dalai Lama on several occasions, who has given it his patronage since 2006. The book is the result of numerous visits that the author has made to Sarnath over the years, struck by the serenity of the students and by the education for sustainability and peace. In the book, Giacomin's words and example are intertwined with the voices of the many thinkers (Terzani, Illich, Latouche) who in recent years have been unmasking the limits and contradictions of the models of knowledge and development of the industrialized West. In the volume, chapter after chapter, the strength of a project is outlined that places education in awareness, non-violence, the search for a happiness disconnected from material goods and consumption, at the center, to try to build a world together best. Foreword by the Dalai Lama.