Berkley Center

Background: As part of the Education and Global Social Justice Project, in May 2012 undergraduate student Charlotte Markson interviewed Mariana Marguery, a member of the Franciscan order. She is the main coordinator of the educational La Casilla Youth Center, and she works in particular with youth in the so-called “community classroom.” In this interview she discusses the Virgen Niña Center for Infant and Family Services (CAIF) and its role with Fe y Alegría, as well as its wider role in Uruguayan education.

Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Mariana Marguery, and I am a member of the Franciscan order. I have been a nun for 34 years, and I am 54 years old now. I am a social worker and have been living in the Casilla for the past nine years.

This house is called the Casilla [the hut] because it was created in 1923 by a group of workers who met in a tin hut. Now it is a large institution with four projects. I am the general coordinator of the Casilla, but I also work in particular with the community classroom.

Can you tell me about the different centers you have here?

We run a community classroom, youth center, a CAIF, and an alternative health center. All three educational projects are run based on a contract with the government. The community classroom is a project that aims at helping youth reintegrate themselves into the formal educational system after having dropped out. It is formal education, but it does not follow the normal format of a high school. We have between 65 and 70 youth attending the program every morning.

The youth center offers non-formal education. The youth that come here are between 12 and 16 years old and are able to attend both programs if they choose. Some do, but they are not the majority. Some are still reluctant to rejoin the formal system, and they only choose to attend the workshops. Sometimes in the second year they then decide they would also like to study again. Our health clinic is attended by a psychiatrist and several natural medicine therapists.

Finally, in the CAIF we have 80 children in the preschool program, and 80 more in the early stimulation program which they attend a couple of days a week with their parents. For us as nuns all of the centers have a purpose, which is not only to get to know God, but also to teach the value of the human being from the perspective of the Christian faith we have. We are motivated by Christian values such as solidarity, justice, and communion, and we try to live these valued with the people. The five of us live here, but we also work in the different centers with the other employees.

How does the membership in Fe y Alegría impact the identity of your center?

The center was founded in 1923 and has had a long development. The Franciscan sisters arrived here in 1957, and for a year and a half we are now part of Fe y Alegría. I would say the membership is working out positively, but it is still a work in progress. It is still very new, and there is no real impact yet.

What are the biggest challenges you have in your work here?

One of the challenges while working with the youth is to make them believe in themselves and believe that they can be different than whatever has been their family history, which for instance often means no one else in their family has gone to college, or all female members of the family have worked as maids. We also try and make them believe in the communal aspect, let them believe it is possible to create something with other people and that they don’t always have to mistrust others. We want them to know that there are adults who are trying to offer them a different world.

Another challenge is to make them persevere in something they struggle with, like doing schoolwork. It is impossible to make progress without coming to class every day. But for any reason, and there are many real reasons, they will stop coming to class: if their mother is sick, if their cousin is pregnant, if they have to take their little siblings to school or their grandparents to the doctor, or if they found work for a couple hours a day. School is the last priority, and making them attend everyday is a big success.

Why is coming to school their last priority?

I believe it is because they have a million other very real needs, which come first. Their parents leave home at 5:00 a.m. in the morning and there is really no one to take the little ones to school; it’s raining and their only pair of shoes is soaked, the streets are full of mud and impossible to cross; or their mothers have asked them to do something else.

These are all real needs and responsibilities, and when they do come and don’t drop out of the program you think, “How strong they are! What a miracle, and how impressive that they can do this with all the other things they live through.” And these are young children—14 or 15 years old—that are already responsible for so much. They are not granted the time other youth have to live a certain time without thinking too much and making a lot of mistakes.

If a student is attending the program and then drops out, can she return if she wishes to?

We try and give our students limits in order to have them get used to certain limits. But in reality if they want to come back we will take them, especially if they had behaved well while they were here. If they had to drop out for one of the many reasons I mentioned before, we have many ways of meeting them halfway.

What does faith mean to you?

For me faith is first and foremost conveying the value of life in whatever shape and realm it may be. I also believe in conveying the value of communion, transcendence, solidarity, and justice. For me this is what faith is, and this is what we call God. The promise of faith is to live like this, and that is what we call living a Christian life: living without a consumerist mentality, without supporting any values that threaten human life, and favoring everything that favors life.