THE PROJECT
ART is a non profit association created is 2006 from an idea of partnership promoted by Lilia Infelise, who has a long-lasting involvement in programs of regeneration of fragile areas and development of human resources, and Déo Gratias Nkinahamira, expert in the fields of education and training, policies and history of Africa and the Great Lakes Region. This partnership is the merging of two personal stories: one deeply entwined in the aspirations, successes and defeats of Italy, a European country struggling to rebuilt its own future after the desolation left after World War II; the other coming from the history of betrayed ambitions of freedom, independence and peace of the Great Lakes region, and especially of the Republic of Burundi.
Among all the actions and entities that prefer emergency interventions and to act in response to humanitarian emergencies, ART is pursuing a specific mission: to take action only where it is possible to create institutional partnerships, namely where there are leaders that work hard to involve the population in endogenous and self determined processes of reconstruction. Due to its specificity, the mission excludes automatically all the actions that do not put education and training at the center of the changing process, and that do not involve and connect all the components of the intervention, wether they are material or not.
ART intends to act as a trailblazer and show that it’s possible to follow a new model of cooperation that is based on partnerships between institutions and on the priority given to local entrepreneurship and integrated development, and according to a a long and medium term perspective of sustainability. The association intends primarily to promote the training of new generation in a multicultural perspective, in order to allow an intelligent and passionate study of their own history. ART prefers to take action in specific contexts and circumstances, keeping an eye on translating the lessons learned on the field into transferable frameworks.
AIMS
The association aims to plan, promote and realise interventions of research-action, education and training, publishing, communication, art and any other kind that pursues the cultural, civil, environmental and economical regeneration of specific territorial communities in the African continent. This approach arises from the choice of giving priority to the interventions in the Great Lakes region with an eye on the transferability of the frameworks.
OUTCOMES
Despite being only recently founded, ART has already established multiple bonds and connections with the people in charge of institutions and private organisms, and promoted the presentation of projects that fulfil its mission. This intense activity originated two acting parties:
- Consortium International pour l’Afrique, a international partnership that unites primarily local administrations and educational centres with the purpose of organising exchange and training programs for young students, public executives and intermediate figures such as union, chambers of commerce and development agencies.
- Exchange Promotion Centre; a service center voted to build attractiveness for investments and fair trade, in accordance to ethical principles that guide the whole activity of ART.
Moreover, ART is part of Beyond the Sea for participated democracy, a cultural and political movement in the form of association that promotes the creation of new spaces, methods and tools for participated democracy and the requalification of representational forms, coherently with the specific culture and history of each country.
