Compelling Ignatian pedagogy resources: not an easy task

Gathering and promoting an effective dissemination of the large set of documents that the atmosphere of the Society of Jesus’s networks is producing every day is not an easy task; this assignment is carried out by the Virtual Centre for the Ignatian Pedagogy since 2007, among others.

The Ignatian Pedagogy Virtual Centre (CVPI) was funded in 2007 by the Provincials Conference of the Society of Jesus in Latin America, as a public service assigned to the Education Sector.

Pursuing the goal of generating some proposals to inspire and invigorate educative and transforming processes, CVPI carries out primarily these three tasks:

1. Gathering, selecting, categorizing, preserving and divulgating the documents and resources on the Jesuit education and the Ignatian pedagogy.

2. Organizing a Digital Library that becomes the main reference for people and institutions interested in gain some information about the sources of study, production and circulation of the educative proposals of the Society of Jesus and its networks and centers.

3. Responding the necessity of support and promotion of the theoretical productions about the fundamentals and processes of the Ignatian pedagogy from the praxis, and facilitate the communication among experts, researchers and educators.

Its core is a Digital Library with full-text documents, analytic reviews and references to bibliographic sources, videos and other selected resources in order to support the educative centers  belonging to or promoted by the Society of Jesus’ Provincials, especially those who constitute the FLACSI, AUSJAL, Fe y Alegría, EDUCSI, UNIJES and AJCU networks, among others, collaborating in the staff training processes, the academic investigation, the elaboration and revision of educative projects, the exchange of experiences, etc.

The senior management of CVPI is under responsibility of the Delegate for Education of CPAL, currently the Fr. Mario Sündermann S.J., from the province of Brazil, whose development is entrusted to Maritza Barrios Yasello since 2011. Besides, she is an advisor of the Centre of Reflection and Education Planning (CERPE), from the Venezuelan Department of Education.

To date, 1 400 documents have been already uploaded with the new catalog system, including Spanish, Portuguese and English texts, added to new ones every week. This system counts with a simple searches engine in the front page that allows the recovery of documents using the words selected by the user, through the menu of the list of authors or combining both of those ways. This also have an advanced search engine, which allows refining the recovery of documents list by languages, thematic categories, educational levels, authors and other variables, using one variable or the desired combination.

This virtual/digital centre invite university students, academic experts and teachers of educational institutions and other interested people, both laics and Jesuits, not only to use the available resources, but also to collaborate in increasing the collection, sending potential and relevant documents to the email [email protected].

The newsletter “The CVPI Selection” is monthly uploaded/posted with documents and resources for training and deepening, treating about the Jesuit education and the Ignatian pedagogy, as well as another ones related to the Ignatian spirituality basics, the apostolic mission of the Society, the collaboration, the social and public activity, the ecological responsibility, the catholic education in the Magisterium, etc. The selected theme this month has been “Collaboration with Networks in service of the Mission/Jesuit Mission” in the educational and social action.

Visit http://www.pedagogiaignaciana.com/ if you want to subscribe and receive monthly newsletters about “The CVPI Selection”, you can do it in this website or from the menu of the front page//top menu.

Do you know of any other Ignatian Pedagogy Centre in your country? Share it with us in the comments section below.