The International Colloquium on Jesuit Secondary Education (ICJSE) has allowed many of our schools to come together and reflect on the common challenges affecting our schools today. We felt strongly that the only way to address these challenges is to create a global network that can develop, as the General Congregation 35 has highlighted, the potential of our worldwide presence. The Jesuit Secretariat for Secondary and Pre-secondary Education, as we expressed in the vision statement at the end of the Colloquium, will coordinate the efforts to make the global network an apostolic tool that can strengthen our schools and help us work more effectively in our global context.
The ICJSE was an enthusiastic and inspiring experience for all the participants. However, we are aware that the real success of the Colloquium lies in the follow up and the ways in which our schools learn to work together. Thus, today begin the exciting, yet challenging task of building our network and renewing our “way of proceeding” in the light of the present context.
For those schools that did not participate in the Colloquium a short explanation and invitation:
One of the main challenges that we explored in the Colloquium is the challenge of building a global Jesuit school network, as previously stated. At the end of the Colloquium ICAJE (The International Commission on the Apostolate of Jesuit Education) proposed to the participants, and it was unanimously approved, that one specific action was “assigning a member of its leadership team the responsibility of facilitating global collaboration and outreach to the global network. These representatives will work with already existing networks and structures to ensure that the efforts started at the ICJSE continue.” (Taken from the vision statement).
For more information on how your school can take this step today, please contact Dan Carmody, the Assistant to the Secretariat for Secondary and Pre-secondary Education at: jesedu-ast@sjcuria.org.
A brief description of the JNCC follows:
Jesuit Network Collaboration Coordinator
The Jesuit Network Collaboration Coordinator will:
- Serve as a contact person for each Jesuit school within the global network.
- Facilitate communication and the exchange of information regarding post-ICJSE conversations, projects and initiatives.
- Serve as a catalyst in the development of programs that educate for global competence in collaboration with other schools in the region and beyond.
- Assist in creating a comprehensive database for the global network of Jesuit schools of existing resources and programs (including but not limited to projects, partnerships, newsletters, online resources and blogs) that educate for “global and cultural competence.”
