Ambassadors of Legality

Human rights, legality and Constitutional rights, equal opportunities, domestic violence, international migrations, drugs, safety, safeguard of the cultural heritage, assisted insemination, cyberbullying, criminal implications for minors. These are few of the societal, ethical or civic issues that the Ambassadors of Legality of the University of Parma have discussed with the younger students of the city, in order to create future responsible citizens with a greater awareness on societal issues.

The project is just named “Ambassadors of Legality” and it aims to train students of the Department of Law, Politics and International Studies of the University of Parma to act as promoters of the values of legality and active citizenship, through a series of seminars dedicated to secondary school students in Parma. Before becoming “ambassadors”, the students are required to attend two compulsory training days, consisting of two specific seminars on ethics and legality in administration processes and institutions; then, a specific topic is assigned to every ambassador, in order to be presented during the scheduled meeting, with the tutoring of a specialist (professor, doctor, lawyer, policeman, etc.).

The project achieves several outcomes: first of all, it’s an example of Service-Learning aimed at the improvement of knowledge of social, civic, ethical and legal issues through an interactive and interdisciplinary approach, while overcoming the traditional frontal lecture; second of all, it promotes the culture of legality and active citizenship; thirdly the project creates a tighter bond between university and local community and stakeholders like secondary schools or associations and institutions operating in the social and legal areas and then, thanks to a peer-to-peer approach, it gives mutual benefits to both university and secondary school students.

The project was born in 2018 and it was presented in early 2019; “Ambassadors of Legality” has received the official support from the Municipality of Parma and involved about 13 students and 15 professors of the Department of Law, Politics and International Studies, as well as a group of about 10 experts for each of the topics addressed. One of the latest output of the project is “The Copybooks of Legality”, published few weeks ago, where you can read about what happened in some of those meetings.

The presentation was attended by the Rector Paolo Andrei, the Pro-Rector for Education and Student Services Sara Rainieri, the Councillor of the City of Parma with responsibility for the Welfare of University Students Leonardo Spadi, the Rector's Delegate for Orientation Chiara Vernizzi, the Rector's Delegate for Anti-Corruption and Transparency and editor of the book Monica Cocconi and the editor of the book Giacomo Degli Antoni. A message was also read by the Vice President of the CUG - Comitato Unico di Garanzia, Veronica Valenti.