To mark World Human Rights Day, Misean Cara partner De La Salle Solidarity International is co-hosting a seminar on best practices from around the world in responding to Pope Francis’s Global Compact on Education, launched in October.
This is the third annual seminar on children’s rights by De La Salle and partners the International Catholic Child Bureau and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy. The 2020 theme is ‘It Takes a Village to Raise a Child’, from the old African proverb, which is at the heart of Pope Francis’s thinking on a sustaining, nurturing “educational village” worldwide.
In this kind of village, Pope Francis, has suggested: education will respect and integrate all aspects of the person; unite school studies with everyday life in family, community, society and the natural environment; generate peace, justice and solidarity, and dialogue between religions; and forge an alliance between the earth’s human inhabitants and our ‘common home’.
In this Human Rights Day seminar, supported by Misean Cara, diverse educators working from a faith perspective will present good practices in responding to the Global Compact. This includes, for example: models of international cooperation; means of engaging family and community; harnessing wider social services that students and young people need; and building resilience, in children and educators, for the intersecting economic, social and environmental challenges ahead.
The Zoom link for the seminar is embedded in the seminar programme here; and you can watch the meeting event from the Facebook pages DeLaSalleOnlus and OngBICE if the Zoom places are booked out.
The Global Compact on Education, launched in October, is the means through which Pope Francis aims to create, through education, a global change of mentality (social, cultural, economic, imaginative) for justice, peace, solidarity and sustainability.
The Compact frames Pope Francis’s vision of “an educational village” uniting the earth’s inhabitants and the earth through open, human relationships rooted in dialogue; education that integrates all aspects of people and society; and educational models that clear discrimination and build dialogue between peoples and religions.
It sets out important ambitions for education and society; a radical, transformative education that addresses consumerism, sustainability and an integral ecology; and an education that prepares people to serve humanity, planet and peace, as people assume greater responsibility to address economics and politics, inequality and sustainability, through a humanism rooted in solidarity.
There is a strong resonance with Misean Cara members’ firm belief that an “integrated holistic education” is vital for supporting empowerment and the emergence of leadership, for greater equality, and for enabling communities to transform their lived realities.
As noted in our submission to the 2021 Global Education Monitoring Report on Non-State Actors in Education, Misean Cara members’ initiatives emphasise quality in education, but also the place of personal development; encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; engaging with the environment, community and cultural dignity; and enhanced stewardship of the natural environment, among other matters.
–Eamonn Casey, Misean Cara Project Officer for Human Rights and Advocacy
