On 10 November 2023, at the event “We jointly promote the Global Compact on Education” organised by the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Education Commission of the Unions of Superiors General (UISG and USG) as well as the OIEC, Brothers of the Christian Schools Juan Antonio Ojeda and Manuel Jesús Ceballos FSC (co-authors) launched at LUMSA (Rome) to more than 100 Superiors General the book: “Learning from others: HOW TO BUILD THE GLOBAL COMPACT ON EDUCATION FROM THE TERRITORY. The experience of the North of Santander Region (Colombia)“.
A book produced in collaboration with the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Team for the Global Compact on Education, the Education Commission of the Unions of Superiors General, the International Office of Catholic Education (OIEC), the Jesuit Global Network and CPAL (Conference of Jesuit Provincials in Latin America and the Caribbean), the EIS (Educare all’Incontro e alla Solidarietà –Educating in Encounter and Solidarity) of LUMSA and the Governorate and the Compact Team of the North Region of Santander. It provides clear orientations to help to weave together the Global Compact on Education from the territory (village, neighbourhood, city or region).
The book challenges us; it shows us routes to follow, steps to take; it provides us with multiple suggestions, tools and orientations to make the Compact a reality where we live, counting on everyone, excluding no one. Involving and mobilising the different educational and social sectors, to generate this local alliance with global openness and thus respond to the Pope’s invitation to rebuild together a Global Compact on Education.
The political initiative of the North Region of Santander (Colombia) to build an Education Pact for the Region, involving all citizens, inspires us and serves as an example, not to copy their path and options, but to create the most appropriate and relevant paths for each territory. They show us that it is possible to achieve a new social contract to improve education and generate a new society that is more humane, peaceful, just, fraternal, supportive and sustainable.
As H.E. Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça states in the book’s foreword: “The global educational village from the union of local villages. You will have to find the original way to build the local educational village, without copying or standardising its contribution. Based on your culture, tradition, art, values, history, etc. you will discover your “blue flame”, which is your creative and unique way of being educators and builders of the local village according to what God expects from you. Then the global educational village will not be a homogenisation or standardisation of all cultures (like the new mental colonialism) but the coming together of many local villages in the richness of their diversity” (p. 7).
In this regard, on the back cover of the book, Pope Francis also shows us the way to build the Global Compact on Education from the local level: “We need to sink our roots deeper into the fertile soil and history of our native place, which is a gift of God. We can work on a small scale, in our own neighbourhood, but with a larger perspective. […] The global need not stifle, nor the particular prove barren”, our model must be that of a polyhedron, in which the value of each individual is respected, where “the whole is greater than the part, but it is also greater than the sum of its part ” (FT. 145).
Let us take the initiative and lead the construction of the Compact wherever we live, changing education and with it, transforming the lives of people and their contexts to achieve a better world for all: more humane, fraternal, supportive and sustainable.
We share with you the book in Spanish (it is being translated into English, French, Italian and Portuguese) as well as the presentation and summary leaflets in the five languages.
