Berkley Center

Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in May 2018, undergraduate student Grace Koehl interviewed Jessica García, director of informal education for Entreculturas in Madrid, Spain. In this interview, García discusses her work empowering Spanish students to be global citizens through the Youth Solidarity Network.

Can you tell me a little bit about what you do here at Entreculturas?

I am in the Citizenship department as the director of informal education.

Can you describe the Informal Education department at Entreculturas?

It is a part of the mission of Entreculturas. My department works on events, formal education, informal education, and mobilization. I am in charge of informal education and mobilization. One part of the work is working on the diffusion of educational materials focused on awareness and making sure that school communities feel close to the mission of Entreculturas. More specifically, it’s awareness about education, migration, intercultural issues, gender, and environment. 

To do this, we’ve created a series of educational materials called “The World in Your Hands.” It includes informative posters for specific days such as World Peace Day, Day Against Violence, Children’s Rights Day, Gender Day, and so on. These materials are geared towards children ages 4 to 16. There are other materials oriented towards adolescents and teachers that are a little more specific. We also have created another line of materials that focuses a little more on emotions. These programs are called “A World Through Play” and “A World Through Theater.” And it’s the same type of messaging but in a more playful manner. It helps for younger students to understand the topics better. 

Then, there is a program that is more specific. It’s called the Youth Solidarity Network. The Youth Solidarity Network is carried out in schools outside of the traditional school day. Therefore, it falls under informal education. Within each school, there is a teacher that voluntarily accompanies a group of students (also voluntarily participating) to go through the program. They do volunteer work and solidarity efforts together. It doesn’t all have to do with solidarity, and the students lead the effort on all of the programming. It doesn’t all have to do with the school community but also with the neighborhood. This program has been running for 17 years. There are currently 2,200 students participating, but the group in each individual school is small. This is all within Spain.

For my job, I coordinate the staff members working on citizenship in each delegation to implement the network in their area. The idea of the project is to form global citizens who have the skills to transform global realities, change situations of injustice, and be aware of the fact that the world is more than just what you personally experience in your day-to-day life. Entreculturas has the opportunity to link these participating youth in Spain with youth in other countries. And from there, the Entrescuelas program was born. Entrescuelas puts youth in Spain and youth in other countries that are from Fe y Alegría or the Jesuit Refugee Service in contact so that they can work on projects together. For example, the students work on projects related to bullying. It’s something that is very interesting to the students, especially in Nicaragua. Another example would be migration and refugees in Colombia. The students there participate in our campaign happening in Spain, and we participate in their campaigns in other countries. This program has been going on for 8 years now. 

It’s gone one step further in this last year with a new program called Generation 21 Network. The Generation 21 Network is a Fe y Alegría federation program that is led by Colombia and co-led by Argentina and Spain. What it does is put youth from 21 Fe y Alegría federation countries together to realize events and actions on a global scale. So this is another part of the accompaniment that we provide.

And in an even more specific part, something we are realizing now through an external evaluation of the Youth Solidarity Network is that the program is actually contributing to creating change agents in youth and making sure that they are more conscious of their realities and those of other people. So, it’s very interesting for us to try and include a broader focus of social inclusion in schools. We already have the Youth Solidarity Network in some schools that serve at-risk communities, but we’d like to be more intentional about our work. For this, we created a program called Decide-Coexist. Decide-Coexist uses all of the methodology, all of the materials, and all of our ideas about global citizenship to do work focused on social exclusion in order to create change. We’re piloting it right now.

Why does Entreculturas work to engage school teachers in the Youth Solidarity Network?

Within the Entreculturas staff, there is only one person per delegation (in Spain) focused on informal education. And they could be in charge of up to 112 schools. So it would be impossible to pull it off with just Entreculturas staff members. It wouldn’t be sustainable, either. The idea of the program is that the students go through it and learn, and then they exit the program. The teachers can be the ones to continue the program and keep it going within their school communities. So, there is this intentional idea of involving teachers to make it sustainable and feasible. 

Within Entreculturas’ informal education programming, do Jesuit values or identities show up?

In the Youth Solidarity Network program, the entire pedagogy is based on Ignatian thought. It is the base of our entire methodology. To be fair, it isn’t always explicitly stated in our programming. The Youth Solidarity Network is a program that is run in 40 percent Jesuit schools and 60 percent schools of another nature (e.g. public schools, schools of another religious affiliation). So, although Ignatian principles and popular education guide everything that we do, it’s not so obvious. We also have a course specifically on Christian thought now. In that course, teachers can work with us to connect ideas in the curriculum to the Church. Something else that is interesting is a specific campaign that we’re working on right now with the Jesuit Refugee Service based on a document published by Pope Francis, the 4 Verbs of the Pope.

It seems to me like the informal education programming here is mostly focused around youth. Why is this sensitivity and citizenship education work done with youth? What are the advantages of engaging youth on these issues?

We work with youth primarily because I don’t think there are a lot of organizations that are doing a lot of youth work.  This is a mandate for us: to be where others are not. Secondly, because the Fe y Alegría tradition is to work with young people as well. It’s our natural habitat, and it is our vocation to be working with young people. Thirdly, young people are, in my opinion, able to work and think on a more personal level. The changes that young people are able to experience and take in are more profound, more lasting, and have a greater impact on the future. Really, when we do mobilization and awareness work, we are working with the entire population. The work that we do not with students but with teachers is fundamental; you can’t work with youth without working with the faculty in schools. However, focusing on creating specific programming for children and adolescents is Entreculturas’ job.

Why did you decide to work for Entreculturas?

I started here a long time ago. I wanted to work with youth. I had six years of experience working with the Youth Solidarity Network program. Then I worked for four years with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Ecuador. While I was there, I was able to see the other side of our work and see how the way that Entreculturas works makes a lot of sense. I don’t say that just because I work for Entreculturas, but I say it because I was able to see it for myself. The way that Entreculturas works is with respect for everyone, which is something I haven’t been able to see in any other organization like I have here. That is important to me.