PUCPR inaugurates Educational Compact Office

The  PUCPR Educational Pact Office was inaugurated on February 27 of this year. This is an interdisciplinary and intersectoral nucleus dedicated to promoting the implementation of the Global Education Pact in places where the university of the  Brasil Centro-Sul Province has influence.

The inauguration took place online and was attended by various authorities, such as Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, Dom João Justino de Medeiros Silva, president of the Episcopal Pastoral Commission for Culture and Education for the CNBB, the rector of the PUCPR, Br. Rogério Renato Mateucci, and representatives of partner institutions, such as the State Secretariat of Education of Paraná, the Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPR), the pontifical organization Scholas Occurrentes, the Latin American Center for Service-Learning (CLAYSS) and the Libera Università Maria Santissima Assunta (LUMSA), in Rome.

During the inauguration, the participants highlighted the importance of education as a tool to promote a culture of encounter and a new humanism. The opening speech of the event recalled the words of Pope Francis when he mentioned that “Today’s world is constantly changing and faces a variety of crises. Never before has there been such need to unite our efforts in a broad educational alliance, to form mature individuals capable of overcoming division and antagonism, and to restore the fabric of relationships for the sake of a more fraternal humanity.” (Message of Pope Francis – Global Compact on Education)

The Office, made up of people from the different areas of the university, will be in charge of Prof. Dr. Rodrigo de Andrade and Prof. Dr. Ernesto L. Sienna, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Fabián Incerti, Rector of Mission, Identity and Extension.

This new PUCPR service has five lines of action, which include to map; to support and encourage the creation of university initiatives capable of responding to the seven commitments of the Global Compact on Education; to develop and support research in the Compact’s priority thematic areas; to monitor scenarios and trends of permanence policies in higher education; to compose and act in the international network of reference universities for the Educational Compact  and to promote service-learning as a methodology for the development of university extension at PUCPR.

Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça highlighted that the Office will have a double mission, that of coordinating all the initiatives of the University’s Educational Compact and also making the global pact a local Compact; and the ad extra mission of “creating networks with other universities, energizing other educational realities and putting us in contact with multiple realities.”

The Office of the Educational Pact of the PUCPR is another important initiative in favor of a new global educational social contract, and that will undoubtedly contribute to the university becoming a space, increasingly committed to the training of people at the service of the common benefit.

See the complete speech of Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça.