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John Paul II Foundation / News

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Press Releases, Magazine, News, Uncategorized
April 22, 2025

Easter 2025 Realizing we are alive is so simple, it is a sound that comes from our flesh, a sound that our flesh Has taken from the sound of the world. To hear it you have to remove noise, the noise that pretensions make grudges, you have to disassociate From those who live to lynch the infinite, from those who enclose the affair within the walls of the obvious and convenience... (Franco Arminio) With these first lines by Arminio, I would like to open the page dedicated to all of you, friends of the John Paul II Foundation, to welcome Easter delivered to us again this year by the bounty of nature, by the tradition of a millenary civilization and, for many of us, by Faith - argomentum non apparentium, an expression used in the letter to the Hebrews (11:1) - in the risen Christ and, for science, simply by the position in spatial coordinates of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The Foundation organizes its calendar precisely from Easter which is followed by the celebratory feast of St. John Paul II, thus...

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Magazine, News
April 8, 2025

Not one, but multiple overlapping crises are gripping the Middle East, putting millions of people to the test. Famine, conflict and forced migration have made food insecurity chronic. In Gaza, 85 percent of the population struggles to feed itself; in Iraq, 40 percent of arable land is threatened by desertification. Political instability has made the Middle East the macro-region with the highest number of displaced people in the world. For example, Lebanon is home to more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees, despite its collapsing economy; in Palestine, 1.7 million people have lost their homes. In addition to the basic rights to nutrition and housing, the right to education has also taken a back seat. In Lebanon, many schools have closed, leaving 30 percent of school-age refugees uneducated. In Iraq, by contrast, a lack of teachers and funding makes access to schooling even more difficult. People with disabilities remain on the margins: less than 2 percent of...

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Magazine, News
April 8, 2025

In Lebanon, where agricultural power is concentrated in the hands of a few, the John Paul II Foundation puts people back at the center: farmers are once again given the right to be protagonists of their own future. Our growth model seeks to help farmers in the poorest areas not only to improve productivity and make production chains more efficient, but aims for real structural change in order to promote their autonomy and inclusion in markets. The Middle East crisis is threatening the survival of Lebanese small farmers. Without direct access to markets, they are forced to sell their products through middlemen who impose unfair and illegal conditions. In this way they risk becoming the fragile link in the chain and becoming trapped in a perpetual state of vulnerability. Food insecurity has reached alarming levels: according to the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture, 1.65 million people...

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Magazine, News
April 8, 2025

In Jordan, there is still no shared approach to educating the hearing impaired. In fact, public and private schools use different methodologies, creating unevenness in learning levels. The John Paul II Foundation, with the support of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and in collaboration with Studio In - experienced professionals in pedagogy, is promoting an innovative approach to the education of hearing-impaired people through the "Let's Feel Good" project. The initiative also aims to improve the perception of deafness in society by fostering quality inclusive education. The project offers teacher training based on new teaching approaches adopted in public and also private schools. The goal is to deepen knowledge of both the neurophysiological basis of deafness, devices (hearing aids, cochlear implants) and recovery tools (speech-language rehabilitation). In this way, professionals in the field will be able to better understand the behaviors and needs of people...

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Magazine, News
April 8, 2025

With the "Christmas in Palestine" campaign we raised 40,000€, thanks to donations from our supporters. This sum will fund a new cycle of the "A Safe Place" project, with 3 workshops in theater therapy, drama therapy and music therapy at "House of Peace" in Bethlehem. In February alone, about 40 children from "SOS" Villages, including orphans from the Gaza conflict, participated in the activities. Involving both Gaza and Bethlehem children is a key achievement for us: thanks to our workshops, they are acquiring tools to cope with and overcome the traumas of war. Conscious breathing teaches the rhythm of music, but it also helps calm the anxiety that pervades them at the sound of sirens. Closing their eyes tightly before going on stage also helps them imagine a colorful world away from the rubble. Learning to express emotions such as anxiety, sadness and anger is the first step to coping with them and imagining a future of life....

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Magazine, News
April 8, 2025

Renovations at the "House of Peace" in Bethlehem are progressing at full speed! Thanks to the generosity of a loyal donor, we will soon have new spaces to accommodate even more Palestinian children. The structural intervention concerns a hitherto inaccessible area, which needed complete restoration to become a functional environment. Thus the John Paul II Foundation will be able to continue to ensure a better future for children and their families. The space will be dedicated to training and psychological support: a "Safe Place" where children will be able to express themselves and educators will be able to do their work better. We are counting on the work being completed as soon as possible to inaugurate a new phase of the "Peace House" at Easter time: a perfect time to celebrate the hope of a better future for children....

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Magazine, News
December 23, 2024

Dearest and dearest, Thus the poet..." Silence is Christmas! Uncapitalized. In the caresses of a silent crib runs the stand of books that do not speak, of voices that do not write of alphabets that do not speak, of tools that do not serve, of instruments that do not play......" (P. Berdondini) But is it silence or is it stifled voice, annihilated by the roars of horizons frequented by ordnance that plummet on a humanity guilty only of being such? Let us try, then, to cross the border of silence so that instead the books may speak again, the voices may rise, the alphabets may line up again, the tools may be seen in their place on the shelves of artisans and the instruments finally.... beginning to play again. Merry Christmas! Yes! It is still a Merry Christmas with capital letters! Precisely because it is frontier-shelter from the spread of wars; in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Lebanon and Syria and wherever they are not called war but violence, oppression, segregation,...

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Magazine, News
November 15, 2024

With the intensification of the conflict in Gaza and the increasing difficulties of operating in Palestine, the Foundation chose to stay and intervene alongside children. Our primary thought has been to safeguard the little ones, creating a safe place for them to find relief. Even in the West Bank, children live in fear and anguish aware of the difficulties their parents have in providing for their families. Several scientific studies regarding the consequences that war has on young children have caught our attention. Children respond to the stress of armed conflict with increased anxiety, isolation, sleep disturbances and nightmares, poor appetite, learning disabilities, developmental delays and aggressive behavior. Because of the developmental stage a child is in, exposure to war-related stressors affects the formation of a personal identity and personality, the notion of what is right and...

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Magazine, News
November 8, 2024

  Father Ibrahim, it has been a year since Hamas' attack on Israel and the beginning of the war that has devastated Gaza. Did you expect such a long and devastating war? The tragic attack on October 7, 2023 unleashed a spiral of violence that still envelops the Holy Land today. In Gaza, the numbers of dead and wounded, the destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, churches and mosques have soared, and a year later they do not stop: it is a continuous war bulletin that is shockingly updated by the hour. Never would I have imagined that the war would last so long, but what worries me most is its extension to an ever larger area of the region. The war has spread from south to north; for months the West Bank and Jerusalem have been suffering from heightened tensions and the terrible consequences of violence. They have increased...

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