Summer is the best period in the year for gossip and remembrance. For this reason we would like to seize the opportunity to answer some questions that have been recently risen to our attention. What the hell is this JEEP which everybody is chatting about and for which Leone XIII is bothering (again!) to find host families? By the way, 11 places are still missing: don’t lose your opportunity to be part of the history!

 

Once upon a time, May 2004. The European Union gained 10 new countries out of the blue, most of them part of the burn out sovietic world, plus a couple of small islands lost in the Mediterranean Sea. In that time the importance of such an operation was not clear at all; on the contrary, to be honest, there was some confusion: Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, only a few people knew which was which, even fewer understood why all of a sudden it was not possible to write Czechoslovakia without splitting it into two parts and EU were only two almost meaningless letters and not the new political creation they actually meant. The general interest for geopolitics was very low, as well as the international activity of our school, that was linked only to the exchanges that were planned twice a year with Sint-Barbaracollege (Gent) and Aloisiuskolleg (Bonn) inside the frame of the old Comenius projects. Wonderful projects indeed, pleasant and successful, but they didn’t seem to adapt themselves to the new world any longer.

 

But here it is: new protagonists for new times, as it often happens! After this events JEEP was no longer the famous brand of a sport car, but our Jesuit European Educational Project, i.e. the new way the Jesuit schools used to handle the European history: let the students meet once a year in a different school, to be in continuous touch and learn how to discuss about European topics. In May 2004 Leone XIII organized the Feast of Europe to welcome the new countries: Kaunas and Gdynia immediately accepted our invitation: we consolidated our knowledge of the English language, the only way we had to communicate with our new partners, as we were already used to do with Bonn and Gent. And then in a couple of years Marseille, Barcelona, Vilnius and Miscolc followed: a rainbow from East to West, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea, throughout the whole Old Continent.

 

The project was written on unofficial papers, i.e. two tickets of the public transports of Milano: we are proud to show these precious relics to our curious audience, attached at this news, for the first time. There was no lack of paper indeed, but we as teachers are used to enjoy common happy moments together, in places far from the usual school rooms: and we can say that the best ideas were born in unofficial situations, as it happened for the latest details of JEEP 2015 Expo edition, released in Bonn in a nice brewery in the middle of the Xmas markets and written on a couple of Bierdeck, taken under a couple of fresh Weihnachtsbier! Of course you understand we cannot show these documents for the time being: nevertheless we invite you to join us in Milano, from September 27th through October 3rd ,to celebrate JEEP 11th edition: you will be able to see with your own eyes how seriously and thoroughly students coming from eight different countries prepared their topics of discussion.

And today, after that the freaky Lehmann Brothers broke the bank, while the tricky Greeks recalculate their debts and the flexible Germans restyle the Treaties, while the Italians try to conform themselves to the expectations and in all the countries a dangerous euroskeptical wind blows, we want to confirm our commitment and cry our “Yes, we believe in the European Union!”. We are not talking about market and spread, even politics and new geopolitical balances: we are talking about education. We want to educate our students to be men and women for the others and with the others inside the framework of a changing world: our students will be protagonists of future changes and they will not simply follow the drift. No regrets, no homesick, simply the search of a new home, our way to change the world. From September on.