We conclude Season of Creation 2024 with the Oikos Mediterranean project of the Conference of Provincial Ministers of Italy and Albania, based in the friars’ convent in Taranto, Italy. The OIKOS project was officially born in June 2023.
In the Mediterranean we are witnessing wars, fundamentalism, rejection of foreigners, 30,000 deaths in 10 years. And from the environmental point of view, it is a hotspot of climate change. All this is a challenge to us for the future. As Franciscans, together with the laity, we felt the urgency to initiate different processes as a trigger for a new vision of the Mediterranean as a common home for all, starting from a city wounded by a wrong model of development.
We are currently accompanying ten projects and they include: universities, monasteries, businesses, reception of refugees, youth, Marian shrines…etc. With Oikos we want to promote five things: Fraternity (to trigger a fraternal process), Care (the heart of an integral ecology), Measure (to nurture to the limit, to an ethic of sufficiency), Context (to promote localities for an exchange between local and Mediterranean region), Imagination (to give a different shape to the Mediterranean, from a sea of death and rejections to a sea of life, encounter, opportunity).
We are already taking some concrete steps: starting from the knowledge of what is there and presenting the Oikos project in the different realities of the Mediterranean; promoting training and comparison meetings between young people, researchers, teachers, entrepreneurs, artists; accompanying young people to activate care projects in specific places; connecting these care projects by creating a network of projects.
With Oikos we activate three research tables: on artificial intelligence, on indigenous knowledge systems, and on the role of women in the Mediterranean.
In July we experienced in Taranto the first summer school of integral ecology. It was a great fraternal and training experience, 15 professors from different Mediterranean Universities (Nice, Barcelona, Paris, Milan, Rome, Loppiano, Bari, Al-Alzhar…) and 30 young people from Italy, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, France, Bosnia participated. Many topics were discussed: from a complex thought to cities, economics, energy, the role of religions and politics. We have woven a network of fraternity, activating comparisons, hopes and imaginations.
The next event is in Taranto with Mediterranean Interweavings, November 28-30, we will take stock of the research tables, continue the projects activated with the summer school, and launch the new edition of the online advanced training course in integral ecology and the Mediterranean, which will start in January 2025.
In November we will also organize a visit to Egypt, for a twinning with Al-Alzhar University, and to present and activate Oikos projects in the Egyptian land.
