Latin American Social Centers Network: Articulation and Survival

In 2008, in Manaus, Brazil, the network of Jesuit Social Centers in Latin America was finally launched after many years of discerning the need of such structure and level of coordination. The network was launched with the aim of promoting dialogue, exchange, and joint construction between Jesuit social centers for greater impact on public policy in favor of groups, organizations, and social movements in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Some learned lessons of this six years are:

• The Society of Jesus is increasingly working in networks. The network of social centers adds to the universal challenge of moving in the direction of a shared and collaborative mission.
• Our network is relatively new and is taking shape along the way; we learn to network while we do it. We have no clear everything.
• In our experience, we have made the integration from a thematic and territorial logic.
• From the reality of political and social exclusion, we determined and defined issues such as the extractive model that is imposed on people or the problems of youth and violence.
• Little by little, we are seeing results and this has happened through the programs such as COMPARTE, which seeks to share practice and to build inclusive, sustainable, and possible development.

What are our challenges?

• Social centers are constantly adapting to reality and going through changes and significant transformations, which creates serious sustainability problems.
• How do we combine network construction with the needs of individual schools? Times, rhythms, and dynamics of the network are different at each social center.
• We have difficulty in appropriating the identity of the network and only seem to actually participate in the network when proposals are part of the internal dynamics of each of the centers and institutionally fit their plan.
• We lack a conscience and a more global view of the situation in Latin America, the potential for joint action as a body.
• It is not enough to define issues, but we must also determine how to address them, who will be energized by them, and what the role of the network is in these priority issues. We need to realize this and then put it into practice.

Anyway, we are convinced of the goodness that alliances and synergies with other works and other networks of the Society of Jesus, at the local and regional level, are opportunities to which we are called to contribute. No doubt all this work will enrich the universal mission. Its impossible ot summarize all our reflection in such a short post, so, if you want more info, visit the Social Apostolate’s website of the Jesuit Conference of Latin America
This post has been written by Alfredo Ferro SJ, coordinator of the Proyecto Pan-Amazónico of the Jesuit Conference of Latin America.