An optimistic final note may be that children and adolescents in the Project’s Centers have appeared to be much more competent than the adults in learning to live together. They have appeared a lot more capable in building bridges across differences, negotiating conflicts, and inventing successful compromises. Thus they have practiced the big challenge ahead, represented in the logo of the project: “Addition, not Subtraction / Multiplication not Division”. What next? There are pending political decisions to be endorsed by all political parties involved. They concern (a) the initial training of minority teachers, (b) bilingual preschool education, and (c) transformation of state schools, such as to accommodate the needs of the minority and to contribute to a process of social cohesion. Finally, funds need to be secured to this end. Unfortunatelly, at this stage, funds have been severely cut down. Just to give an example, the number of Community Centers, described, is to be reduced by 60 per cent.

Select target paragraph3