Danilo Dolci

Book excerpt: The book presents the multi-faceted opus of Danilo Dolci within the framework of Environmental Education, focusing on his work as a grassroots community educator, nonviolent activist and poet. It illustrates Dolci’s ‘Reciprocal Maieutic Approach’, a dialectic method of inquiry that can be defined as a process of collective exploration, taking as point of departure the experience, culture and intuition of individuals, ultimately directed towards the development of citizenship. Sessions led by Dolci in Sicily from the 1950s to the 1990s gave rise to the development of action plans that aimed to empower individuals, transform communities and, extending far beyond this, towards the planning and implementation of changes that would have a dramatic impact at a global and planetary level.