Education for peace

Soteropolitan administrator Raimundo dos Santos believes in the culture of peace to improve the quality of life! This he inherited from his parents, who brought strong values of humanity and spirituality to that then boy.

Throughout his life, Raimundo fell in love with books and, through them, he met the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich, who portrayed peace, beauty, culture, and the preservation of heritage and cultural memory, and who died even before the birth of the young enthusiast and fan of his teachings. It was also the artist who inspired him to bring together art, science, culture, and spirituality at the Roerich Institute of Peace and Culture in Brazil, officially created in 1999. The institution's mission comes easily to Raimundo's speech: “to reduce violence through education for peace, art, culture, and living ethics”. The thing is that, at the age of 59, that boy still has the teachings of his parents in his heart and his eyes shine when he talks about the Institute and the transformation he has been achieving.

For him, his great motivation is “to work for a better life for people, having quality of life, having opportunities for education, having access to culture, having comprehensive health...”. This includes educating for peace and providing job opportunities for citizens with professionalization in the local culture of their neighborhood. And, by the way, several of these localities, before the Institute's actions, registered high rates of violence.

Remember we talked about twinkle in the eye? That's the reason. But it hasn't been easy. It is necessary to have resources to provide opportunities for people to undergo the proposed actions. And this is one of the biggest challenges identified by Raimundo. How to solve? The administrator wants to combine creativity, innovation, and technology to be aware of what can attract people to their project and thus promote transformations and new understanding.

So much so that the Institute is expanding in Brazil, in the cities of Recife (Pernambuco) and Bauru (São Paulo), and outside of it, in Lisbon and Colombia.

To know ourselves as beings that are not just a physical body, but light, heart, and compassion. That's what Raimundo wants to leave as a message. Meditation, positive thoughts and words, self-knowledge, broadening the perception of beauty, among other things, can change everything, he assures