Since the 1990s, Agape has become aware of its educative role in the many camps for adults and children along the year, and it has started revising the pillars of its own pedagogical model.

This is how, under the supervision of Franca Bezzi, the 5 guidelines were revised:

  1. Motivating people for the work in Agape. The trick is doing it while making it clear how concrete the dimension of the agape is, and offering to every one the possibility to act in single camps and yet keeping a global view of the various projects that really make Agape.
  2. Educating to adultity. A big task for future Staff Groups members is to make them aware of the distance in age and maturity which separates them from the children and adolescents who participate to the camps, and of the educative responsibilities they have towards them. The trick is working on the self to be as much “similar to our own” as possible, in order to get closer to our truest authenticity and not to confuse it with spontaneity or pure instinctivity. Using an apparent paradox, we can say that only those who have long worked on the self can legitimately act spontaneously.
  3. Educating to the relationship with the other. We all agree in theory, but practice is much more difficult. Within the education on this relationship, the education on differences – among the sexes, among classes, among races and cultures – is worth special attention.
  4. Educating to freedom in terms of responsibility. Since the educative point of view, this is quite an important issue in a place where coherence and authenticity are common goals. Very often, the concept of “being free, being responsible” leads to confusion, because freedom is commonly perceived as rebellion, while responsibility is frequently lived as an excessive weight.
  5. Meeting the gospel. This is another difficult and yet thrilling challenge: talking about God in a secular way, giving witness of our faith to those who do not go to church accepting the risk of superimpose our projections on the word of God. How can we get ready to face this challenge all together, believers and non-believers?

hese guidelines still represent a valid model on which the Centre bases its own work with all those who have some kind of role in it. In 2011, as a result of the educative model revision, these guidelines have been compensated by the elaboration of an Education and Training Map.