Edujesuit: Communicating and collaborating on the right to quality education

Ecojesuit articleThe right to a life-long learning quality education for every person without any discrimination is the challenge taken up by the Global Ignatian Advocacy Network (GIAN)-Education, a right to quality education network and collaboration of Jesuit organizations joining efforts and resources to respond to this challenge.

Understanding the overarching importance of communication for promoting inclusive knowledge societies, GIAN-Education developed Edujesuit, the communication and participation tool of the right to a quality Education. It is a workspace where Jesuits and collaborators engaged in the defense and promotion of the right to education can share their experience and work together.

Edujesuit wants to contribute in achieving the universalization of this right and to encourage awareness-raising actions, advocacy relations, and dialogues with decision makers in the education field, especially in relation to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), now increasingly referred to as the Global Goals.

This global event was preceded by the World Education Forum 2015 in Incheon, Korea in May 2015 and for which Edujesuit featured an article by Lucía Rodríguez Donate (Advocacy Programme Coordinator of the Fe y Alegría International Federation and GIAN-Education), Silvio Gutiérrez (Fe y Alegría Nicaragua director), and Pedro Walpole (member of the GIAN-Ecology). They wrote about the importance given to “education as a human right and as a public good and how exercising it enables to exercise the rest of rights and duties. Education is the cornerstone of the sustainable development.

Global Goal 4 in particular intends to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” and is one of the 17 SDGs adopted by more than 150 world leaders last month during the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York, USA.

The post-2015 development agenda, Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is about allowing people to be “dignified agents of their own destiny” as they are enabled to get out of extreme poverty, according to Pope Francis. In his address before the UN General Assembly last 25 September 2015, he stressed the critical role of an integrated education that emanates from the family to community and that an “(e)ducation conceived in this way is the basis for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and for reclaiming the environment.”

Edujesuit gives priority to the qualitative aspect of participation, change, and developing women’s leadership. In its guide reflection that takes the perspective of the Society of Jesus, Edujesuit maintains that “the best springboard for human development, personal dignity and political and economic participation in the poorest nations is high quality education for the whole population.”

Edujesuit helps to ensure visibility of the actions carried out by Jesuit organizations and collaborators in education projects, and brings together Jesuits and partners from around the world to demand the right to education for all “in a right relationship,” as Pope Francis stressed.