Rome (Italy). The contemporary world is in continual transformation and finds itself facing recurring crises. All Nations, the different communities are indissolubly connected and actual events in the whole planet demonstrate this. We must work together for the future of the planet. We need to put everything into play, at the service of the global community, to build together universal solidarity and an open and welcoming society.
For these reasons, Pope Francis, on 12 September 2019, launched a Message to rebuild the Global Educational Pact. Addressing all women and men who have at heart the common good of all cultures and professions, proposed “a meeting to revive the commitment for and with the young generations, renewing the passion for a more open and inclusive education, capable of patient listening, constructive dialogue, and mutual understanding. Never before as now, the Pope stressed, has there been the need to unite our strengths in a broad educational alliance to form mature people, able to overcome fragmentation and opposition, and build the fabric of relationships for a more fraternal humanity.”
The date chosen for the meeting is May 14, 2020, in Paul VI Hall in the Vatican. Pope Francis will meet together with the Representatives of the main Religions, the Representatives of the International Bodies, and the various humanitarian Institutions of the Academic, Economic, Political, and Cultural World, who representing the inhabitants of the Earth, will sign the “Global Compact on Education“, which everyone will commit to implement and disseminate as much as possible.
The path to this appointment is preceded and accompanied by meetings, seminars, insights, and events in many parts of the world to raise awareness, propose reflections, solicit the identification of possible paths for comparison and dialogue.
The Letter written by the Sectors for Youth Pastoral and for Communication of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians is also placed in this context, in which the Educating Communities are urged to “know and study the documents and consider how to promote initiatives in the Communities, networking with other Organisms, Institutions, and environments of formal and informal education where the Salesian educational mission takes place.”
In the current social context, spaces for dialogue and mutual accompaniment must be opened, forging educational alliances between all the protagonists of social life and rediscovering the importance of Education. It is necessary to seek together new forms of active participation of young people and adults born from the creative sharing and involvement of all.
The journey has already begun. Many schools, Catholic and non-Catholic universities, are investigating the anthropological, communicative, cultural, economic, generational, interreligious, pedagogical, and social dimension of this Global Compact.
In fact, on 22 February 2020, there took place in Rome the Forum of dialogue and sharing promoted by the Pontifical Faculty of Education Science ‘Auxilium’ and the Faculty of Education Science of the Salesian Pontifical University of Rome.
In the Assembly of the National Work for the Cities of Children of Rome, children and parents, students and teachers, workers and employers, students and educators, university teachers, representatives of public institutions, met to build a common educational alliance.
The event generated three values:
We are: being there personally, not keeping out of the course of global, local, personal history. We, young and old, choose to be there.
We share: to share and participate. Dialogue is indispensable for building the ‘culture of encounter’, to change the model of global development, to re-direct globalization towards relatedness.
We care: to involve ourselves personally in understanding the implications of our being one human family.
The focus was an opportunity to study the importance of reciprocal education and dialogue between generations, in order to “promote and activate together, through a common educational pact, those dynamics that give meaning to history and transform it in a positive way”, as indicated by the Pope. This is so that each one become an aware protagonist of this alliance, “taking on a personal and community commitment, cultivating together the dream of a humanism in solidarity.”
The Councilors, Sister Runita Borja and Sister Maria Helena Moreira, invite us “to share ideas and socialize news of the various initiatives in the Provinces to strengthen the path of alliance together with many people and groups of the world ensuring the younger generations a large village that guarantees their integral development “(Website of the FMA Institute at the following email contact: amministratoreweb@cgfma.org)
“To educate a child you need an entire village” (African proverb).
