The GIAN Right to Education core group meets in Madrid

The Core Group of GIAN (Global Ignatian Advocacy Network) for the Right to Education comprised of representatives from different Conferences (CPAL, Europe, JESAM, South Asia, and Canada/USA) and international organisations (Fe y Alegría and JRS) working within the schools, universities and social organisations of the Society of Jesus met from 10 to 13 October 2016 in Madrid (Spain).
Throughout four days of work, the group reflected on the current state of global education and discussed how to encourage a more concrete commitment among Jesuit institutions to support the right to a quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.
For this purpose, one of the first tasks were to update the positioning document on the right to education that was developed by a group of Jesuit organizations collectively committed with the education in 2008.
One of the aims of this network is to raise awareness at the inner Society about this essential right. In order to do so and as a communication tool, edujesuit.org was launched two years ago. Accordingly, some impact data, future challenges, and the latest communicative outcomes were shared from the coordinating team. One of these outcomes was the video which was launched on June, 2016 as a tool to communicate the “Right of Education, Right to Hope Campaign”.

In this sense, one of the major announcements were the incorporation of new members to the core group coming from the United States and Latin America. As a result, the core group is actually formed by: Giulia McPherson (JRS USA), Jorge Cardoso (Europe – Social), Ricardo Angulo (JECSE – Europe), Luis Ugalde SJ (CPAL), Mª Eugenia Ocampo (CPAL-AUSJAL); William Muller SJ (USA- Canada Jesuit Schools Network), John Chathanatt SJ (South Asia), Augustin Kalubi SJ (JESAM) Carlos Fritzen SJ y Lucía Rodriguez (Fe y Alegría).
With this global perspective and in a participatory approach, they came up with the idea of how to work together in a network for the subsequent years. As a result, the first lines of action and planification of work were elaborated. In order to carry out this task, they completed a final document, which will be soon disseminated in its website, with the conclusions and requests which will be sent to the new Superior General, Arturo Sosa SJ and to his government group. The network addresses him with the hope of contribute to what it seems to be impossible in the current days, where there are 263 millions of children who are receiving no schooling education. More than half of this children are located in the South of Asia and Sub Saharan Africa and 61,9 millions of this children live in countries involved in conflict.