Dear friend:
We want to invite you to participate and share the Project “¡I CAN!”. Some institutions have designed it with hope and joy. We want to give answer to the challenge proposed by Encyclical LAUDATO SI’ from the point of view of children and young people. They are the hope of a new humanity. Pope Francisco is looking forward to seeing the answers and actions of children and young people, catholic or non-catholic.
Lately, we have been invited by multiple instances to give a good education focused on the learning process and with the children as the center of their educative process. This way and, observing the world through their eyes, they have to be the ones who identify, know and take into account what happens to them and to their concrete realities; they should be the ones, who in a critical, creative and collaborative way, propose changes that make their lives, their society and their environment better, co-creating together changing projects and putting them into practice.
We offer you this teaching guide, entitled “¡I CAN! Children and young people face the challenge LAUDATO SI’: the care of the common house”. In this guide, in a brief and simple way, we describe and point out the steps to follow to generate among all…thousands, millions of projects of change carried out by children and young people in their classrooms, in their catechesis sessions and in their formal or informal meetings. This is an invitation not only for believers or catholic schools; on the opposite, it is directed to everybody, no matter their beliefs, race, territory, age, sex…We can and we must work together, completing each other’s, to fulfill the challenges of LAUDATO SI’ and the challenges of the objectives of sustainable development, approved by the UN in 2015.
One way or another, the important thing is working together, with a tool that guarantees the protagonist of young people and children. In a critical and autonomous way, they must feel, take care and become conscious of the fact that they can change their own realities; they have to imagine a possible solution and accomplish it; they must act with decision and compromise and share it with others. The methodology of Design for Change helps us in this process and allows us to share the projects, inspiring each other and generating a network of little changes that will transform the world and the society, making it more human, supportive and sustainable.
Children and young people, with their originality, free of corruption and of selfish and mercantilist interests, will guide us to create a more human and fairer world, respectful with diversity and with social and environmental contexts. They will take care of the common house and eliminate poverty building an encounter culture, a culture of justice and peace.
- LET’S ADD SUPPORTERS AND COLLABORATORS TO THE PROJECT. WE COUNT ON YOU! LET’S COUNT ON EACH OTHER!
We would like nobody to feel excluded or out of place. We humbly present you an open, receptive and collaborative project, so that you all feel an author and part of it. The OIEC (Catholic International Education Office); the Educational Commission of USG-UISG (International Union Superiors General); the Scholas Occurrentes; the OMAEC (World Organization of Former Students of Catholic Education) and the International Movement of the Methodology Design for Change: together they join forces for a great success of the initiative.
Undoubtedly, more and more institutions and entities will join us… you are all invited to give these children and young people power and co-create with them. You are all welcome, all of you have a lot to give to this Project. Let’s be one, let’s work together, let’s complete each other with respect and admiration for everybody… let’s give voice and decision to children and young people, let’s trust them and let’s be surprised by them.
We hope this initial list to grow and grow, with the certainty that nobody feels superior in this Project, with the idea that we all fit in…the challenges are so big and noble that we need as many people as possible.
- COMMUNICATE AND LET PEOPLE KNOW THE TEACHING GUIDE USING THE CHANNELS AT YOUR DISPOSAL. ACHIEVE THE HIGHEST PARTICIPATION.
We invite all of you to expand this initiative, to use it as your own, sending this teaching guide to all the educative entities and forums, to the teachers, to all the principals of the different educative entities that you know of… Encourage them to participate, take them by their hands, give them support…use the multiple channels of communication that you have. Post it on your web page, send them by email, social networks… It is important and urgent to get the highest participation of young people and children from the whole world.
- A NEWSLETTER OF THE PROJECT “¡I CAN!” WILL ACCOMPANY US IN THIS PROCESS.
Every two months, we will send you a newsletter; it will be our way of informing you of how the project is developing. We will tell you in it the projects we are carrying out and in which countries; the new collaborators we have; we will offer you guidance and we will solve questions and possible difficulties; we will also interview personalities and entities that will encourage us to participate.
José Ramón Batiste, OMAEC General Secretary
