We present the article published in the “Governing Together” column of Il Quotidiano del Sud*, authored by Fabrizia Arcuri, journalist and Head of Public Relations and Communication at the Summer Peace University.
Piano piano. That is how many sentences begin in Italy’s small towns. It is an expression that holds wisdom, balance, and care. It does not come from dawdling, but from the awareness that important things require time, attention, and roots. And, paradoxically, it is precisely from a piano piano that the greatest changes can take shape.
It is with this intentional slowness that, in recent years, in Calabria, Belvedere Marittimo—a municipality in the province of Cosenza overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea—has begun to write this story. No longer merely a picturesque setting, but a place that experiments, welcomes, and generates relationships. Here, among alleyways that preserve memory and squares that open onto the sea, the Calabrian Institute of International Policies (IsCaPI) created the Summer Peace University (SPU), transforming this territory into an international platform for dialogue and education.
The Summer Peace University is an international programme of advanced training that each year involves around twenty academic institutions from different countries. Partner universities select outstanding students through dedicated scholarships, promoting the mobility of young people from diverse cultural backgrounds. The programme includes teaching and research activities led by international academics, experts, and professionals, structured into lectures, workshops, and field-based practice.
The SPU is not a sequence of lessons, but an immersive journey that weaves together study, shared life, and active participation. Peace, sustainability, cooperation, diplomacy, and leadership are learned by living together: sharing spaces, responsibilities, institutional meetings, explorations of the territory, and moments of community. It is an experience that educates as much as the content does, because it teaches dialogue, listening, respect, and the management of differences. This is where the SPU finds its strength: where learning becomes experience, sustainability a daily practice, and peace a way of being in the world.
And to that piano piano, which accompanies every gesture of life in the borgo, the community adds another distinctive sign: its tutto bene. A simple and disarming greeting with which residents welcome students and guests. It is not a question; it is an affirmation. A way of saying, “you are safe, you are with us.” A spontaneous form of hospitality that makes you feel at home even before words, making differences of language and origin unnecessary.
Among the academic realities that have recognised the value of this vision is the May University in Cairo (MUC), which recently hosted an important Euro-Mediterranean Forum dedicated to higher education, mobility, and international partnerships, with a focus on strengthening collaboration between academia and industry in Italy and Egypt. A high-profile context, animated by authorities, scholars, students, institutional representatives, and business partners, which offered a space for concrete discussion of the challenges and opportunities of global education.
It is within this scenario that the visit to Cairo took on an even deeper meaning and showed how a project born in a small town can generate value far beyond its borders. The genuine interest, the questions, and the proposals from young people confirmed a process already under way: when an idea has solid roots, it finds fertile ground wherever it is carried.
A historic centre can become the hub of new cultural trajectories: it is not geography that changes, but perspective. That is where true regeneration takes place.
In this logic, Cairo and Belvedere Marittimo met: a vibrant, pulsating city and a village of vigilant quiet. A fruitful contrast, capable of creating common ground where listening gains value, education becomes a shared good, and young people take on the role of protagonists of a present built together.
There is no need to change geography, but to change perspective. And so piano piano, yes. Not as a slowing down, but as a choice. Because what endures needs time. Because authentic relationships require continuity, trust, and mutual responsibility. Because knowledge, when it is shared, becomes a civic act.
And it is the same for peace. It is not born from solemn declarations, but from daily practices. It is a patient work, built drop by drop. Each year, those who arrive bring new questions and leave carrying more than a memory: they carry a fragment of that piano piano that belongs to those places, and that tutto bene that belongs to the people who live there. And in that conscious slowness, in that ability to give attention back to the world, perhaps the most precious thing is revealed: the world is no longer a distant elsewhere, but a welcoming horizon—a place in which it is possible to make an impact, to leave a mark, to contribute to the writing of a shared story. It is in this possibility—quiet, patient, concrete—that the most authentic meaning of peace is recognised.
Fabrizia Arcuri
Journalist
Head of Public Relations and Communication in Italy, Summer Peace University