On 16 and 17 May 2026, during the Caciocavallo Cheese and Transhumance Festival in Corleto Monforte (province of Salerno), we took part in something that has been close to our hearts for a long time. For three days, from 15 to 17 May, together with a diverse group of young people, associations, social cooperatives and municipal administrations, we walked, talked, played music and worked side by side along the transhumance trails, giving rise to a new format: the "Transumanza per la Pace" (Transhumance for Peace).
The idea grew out of the synergy between us at Dandelion Social Innovation Lab and ACARBIO (Associazione Costiera Amalfitana Riserva Biosfera), two organisations steadily committed to youth policy and rural development in the province of Salerno, together with the Municipality of Corleto Monforte, which embraced the idea and wove it into the cultural fabric of its community. From this encounter we built an event designed to bring the generations together around a theme that concerns us all, today more than ever: peaceful coexistence, here and in the years to come.
A transhumance carrying messages of peace
The transhumance — the age-old movement of animals and people between pastures — became a tangible metaphor for three days. The cows were adorned with garlands of flowers, hearts and flags made entirely from recycled materials, in a creative workshop attended by the European Solidarity Corps volunteers of our Morigerati Rural Lab together with those of ACARBIO's Corleto Rural Lab. Not only animals, then: some participants also paraded with the same symbols, in a simple gesture through which we wanted to make a bigger idea visible: moving, meeting and mingling belong to the natural order of things, and borders — physical as well as cultural — are never absolute.
Peace Talks: our voice for telling the story of peace
Among the initiatives we followed most closely is "Peace Talks", the podcast project we conceived and coordinated through the "Giovani Podcaster per la Pace" (Young Podcasters for Peace) group, in collaboration with the Libersare association of Bari and Radio Lasagne Verdi of Sala Consilina. Thanks to the support of the Fondazione Vincenzo Casillo and the Erasmus+ project "La Voce dei Giovani" (The Voice of Young People), we produced three episodes that recount, in the voices of those who live it every day, the many forms that peacebuilding can take in local communities — from intercultural dialogue to everyday work in the community. It is a tool especially dear to us: giving young people a microphone rather than speaking for them.
Alongside this more informal work, a workshop was also held on the role of youth participation in local policymaking, bringing together representatives of the Municipality of Corleto Monforte and a group of 20 young people from the inner areas of Southern Italy, as part of the Erasmus+ project "La Voce dei Giovani", carried out together with the Youth Forum of Tramonti (Forum dei Giovani di Tramonti).
The Manifesto of Corleto
The high point of the three days came with the signing of the Manifesto of Corleto (Manifesto di Corleto), which we helped to write together with all the participants and which was presented by the Mayor of Corleto Monforte, Filippo Ferraro, at the close of the festival, in a mountain refuge at 1,300 metres above sea level. The text was signed by three municipal administrations — Corleto Monforte, Sant'Angelo a Fasanella and Ottati — and by ten non-profit organisations, including ours: ACARBIO APS (Tramonti), Dandelion Social Innovation Lab impresa sociale (Morigerati), Associazione Libersare OdV (Bari), Associazione I Ragazzi di San Rocco – Radio Lasagne Verdi (Sala Consilina), Monaci Digitali APS (Padula), Mòvesi APS (Buccino), Associazione GeoTrek Paestum, Forum dei Giovani di Tramonti, Comitato Auletta Casa Mia (Auletta) and Rarreca (Caggiano).
In the Manifesto we wanted to describe in simple words what happened during those days:
"We decorated the cows with messages of peace. We listened to the voices of young people on the issues of their time. We met those who have crossed borders not by choice but out of necessity. We ate mountain caciocavallo cheese together and looked up at the same stars."
From this come the seven Principles of Corleto, which we wrote together and in which we fully recognise ourselves: peace as the presence of living relationships in local communities and not the mere absence of war; young people as political actors and not passive recipients of policies; the meeting of cultures as a collective resource; traditions that live on only if they renew themselves; the inner areas recognised as places of culture and social innovation and not peripheries; time — for care, relationships and learning — reclaimed as a common good and a right, freed from the nostalgic rhetoric of "slow living"; and finally the network, understood as the true strength of those who work for peace in their communities.
As signatories we have committed to making the Transumanza per la Pace an annual and international event, to involving more and more young people in the processes of cultural production and civic participation, to sharing resources and networks with the other signatory organisations, and to carrying the voice of Corleto into local, regional and European institutions.
Why all of this makes sense for us, here
It is no coincidence that an initiative like this is born precisely in the inner areas of the province of Salerno, the territory where we work every day from Morigerati. Research by the Youth Observatory (Osservatorio Giovani) of the University of Salerno has long described a territory marked by depopulation, the flight of the most qualified young people and a lack of essential services — but also, against the trend, by a "capacity to stay" (capacità di restanza) made up of networks, alliances and life projects built by those who choose to stay or to return. It is a territory, say the young people interviewed by the Observatory, "in search of direction", where potential is not lacking but remains fragmented, and where the future depends on building a shared identity and a collaborative ecosystem based on trust, innovation and participation.
The Transumanza per la Pace is, in this sense, our own small concrete piece of that direction: a grassroots format that holds together the pastoral tradition of the southern Apennines with the most contemporary tools we work with every day — the podcast, the European Solidarity Corps, Erasmus+ — and that shows how inner areas can truly be spaces for experimentation and not merely places people leave behind.
We wish to warmly thank the Municipality of Corleto Monforte for its hospitality and for believing in the project from the very first moment, the people of Corleto and the guests of the Corleto Monforte Special Reception Centre (Centro di Accoglienza Straordinaria) for their welcome, the Municipality of Morigerati for making possible the journey of our European Solidarity Corps volunteers, and the Fondazione Vincenzo Casillo for the contribution that made the "Peace Talks" podcasts possible.
Movement is not flight. It is search. It is encounter.
We look forward to seeing you next year, for the second edition of the Transumanza per la Pace.