2 meetings and one goal: education networking for innovation

Jesuitas Educació Foundation, an educational initiative based on pedagogical innovation, and the Faculty of Psychology, Educational Sciences and Sports Blanquerna-Ramon Llull  University in Barcelona, Spain organized from July 4th to the 8th the first “International Symposium Education and Change”.

The main objective of this symposium was to highlight the experiences which are transforming education in Barcelona directed towards an integral education of the person, addressed primarily to principals and school teachers at educational centres that innovate and transform.

The organizers, EDUCSI (the Spanish Jesuit Education School Network) are committed to a deep transformation of education, building a new school with a new model, based on principles and values of Ignatian pedagogy, advances in pedagogy, psychology and neuroscience. Aware of the fact that the 21st century society is different from the 20th century, they seek to put students at the centre of teaching-learning processes, in order to integrate knowledge in a much more experiential way.
With networking as a vocation, Jesuitas Educació schools work integratedly and network together as a single institution, in a broad collaborative space with the rest of Jesuit schools in Spain, Europe and the world. This is why, from July 8th through the 9th, the Spanish Jesuits NGOs Entreculturas and Alboan promoted the first encounter between the international network Fe y Alegría and the Spanish Network of Jesuit Schools (EDUCSI) “Towards new educational horizons”.

The meeting marked an important milestone in the construction of networking between different educational initiatives of the Society of Jesus as it gathered the Network of Popular Education Schools Fe y Alegría, which had national representation from Fe y Alegría as Uruguay, Haiti, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil and Chad and the General Coordinator of the International Federation, Carlos Fritzen SJ and EDUCSI, the Spanish Network of Jesuit Schools attended by school principals and also those in charge of the Educational Sector of the Society of Jesus in Spain.

Several members of the Latin American Jesuit Educational Network (FLACSI), representatives of the Education Sector of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar (JESAM) and memebers from the GIAN Network for the Right to Education also participated in the meeting.

The aim of the meeting was to create spaces for encounter and reflection through workshops to promote knowledge and exchange between people who are leading innovation and transformation processes in their countries, to socialize these experiences, to share the motivations and desires that put these initiatives in place and to identify challenges that unite the organizations to review and address the potential ways networking between organizations might be possible.

These two organizations work with more than three and a half million students between Spain and Latin America, therefore, the enormous potential of this first meeting to plan the work in collaboration between the two networks. This event therefore represents an institutional milestone very recognizable to address shared work strategies in educational terms of the Society of Jesus globally, that can converge and mutually benefit.