Berkley Center

This report reflects on the fifth year of the Education and Social Justice Project, which provided four Georgetown University students with fellowships to travel to Bangladesh, Brazil, Burkina Faso, and Nicaragua to conduct in-depth examinations of innovative educational initiatives, with a focus on the work of Jesuit institutions.

During its fifth year, the project awarded fellowships to four students who spent three weeks with institutions engaged in efforts to promote social justice through education. Kendra Layton traveled to Dhaka, Bangladesh to research how Caritas Bangladesh supports the country’s hardest-to-reach students, including those who are indigenous, live in slums, and have disabilities. In Brazil, Adam Barton partnered with Pastoral da Criança to examine its efforts to build community solidarity through maternal and early childhood health education. Elizabeth “Hopey” Fink analyzed the role of Jesuit values in supplementary education at CERCLE, a Jesuit-run study center in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Gianna Maita traveled to Nicaragua to explore student engagement within the context of Nicaraguan history and the current political atmosphere in the community of the Central American University in Managua through service-learning, research, and other programs. This report brings together the main results of their field work, including background analysis of each of the initiatives and excerpts from extended interviews with educators and practitioners in each country.