Padova

It is the third day in Italy for our international team of professors, and another special symposium is held at the University of Padova entitled: "Culture of Peace applied to Education." Its purpose is to bring culture of peace and peace education into academic research and teaching, This symposium came to reality at the invitation of Professor Ines Testoni. Since 2012 she has been Associate Professor and Researcher of Social Psychology at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology (FISPPA).

The afternoon consisted of presentations by three professors: Dr. Mahatapa Palit, Dr. Lunthita Duthely and Dr. Harashita Sunaoshi, and passing of the Peace Torch outside the lecture hall. Professor Testoni and her doctoral and master's students joined the occasion. The international team of professors come from diverse academic (and cultural & ethnic) backgrounds, and they came together to share their efforts to inspire peace as a foundation for an empowered future.

The Symposium is chaired by Dr. Ciro De Vincenzo, Adjunct Professor of Community Psychology and Psychology of Social Phenomena & Post doctoral Research Fellow, University of Padova. The Symposium begins with a live zoom link to the President of the European Peace Run, Devashishu Torpy, who is in Torino with the Peace Run team. Matteo Rigo, Master's student in Clinical-Dynamic Psychology helped to organize the event.

Dr. Harashita Sunaoshi is from Kyoto Seika University & Kansai University, Japan. Her presentation shows how peace education has been incorporated into her EFL (English as a foreign language) classes, by inviting Peace Run coordinators from different countries into her classes on Zoom.

Excerpts from the Palermo Peace Week video (2019) is played, as it was one of the teaching materials in Dr. Harashita's EFL class. Here, Ms. Ranjana Ghose, Curator of The Jharna-Kala Foundation and President of the Sri Chinmoy Centres International, is giving a remark.

The students experience one-minute concentration (meditation) exercise, concentrating on the heart and breathing.

The Peace Run is the embodiment of the founder Sri Chinmoy's peace philosophy.

Professor Ines Testoni. Her research and teaching specialisation includes Creative Arts Therapies (CAT) and Death Studies and End of Life. The Peace Run professor team is extremely grateful to her readiness and openness to have us so enthusiastically at such a short notice.

Dr. Mahatapa Palit is Chairperson of Business Management, City University of New York (CUNY). She discusses how Empathy (Oneness) can be introduced to the teaching and research in business, and how empowering it is for the students in entrepreneurship.

Dr. Mahatapa introduces an aphorism by Sri Chinmoy, with Italian translation, to ponder in order to cultivate empathy.

Dr. Lunthita Duthely, Research Associate Professor with the University of Miami School of Medicine, talks about her doctoral research, where she used heart-centred gratitude-meditation as an intervention to improve adolescents' well-being.

Dr. Lunthita and Dr. Ciro, who facilitated today's symposium.

We are extremely grateful to the local Peace Run volunteers, who helped organise today's event: Roxana, a former graduate student of the University of Padova and Sandra; also Shadri for kindly hosting the presenters.