Solidarity, education and social development
On the 1st of December, in Madrid, SED and FMSI signed an agreement of co-operation. The agreement was drawn up by FMSI and proposed last May to the Provinces and Marist solidarity organizations for the purpose of mutual support in the work for needy children and promotion of their rights. After the six Provinces who joined immediately, SED is the first Marist NGO to subscribe to this agreement.
This establishes the bases for reciprocal collaboration and, more specifically, spells out in twelve points the support that the Marist corporate bodies would be able to provide for FMSI, and, in eleven points, the services FMSI would be able to offer the Provinces and Marist corporations to help them implement the call of the XXI General Chapter “to become experts in the protection and promotion of the rights of children” and to take concrete steps in this direction. In this matter, in fact, apart from supporting solidarity projects, FMSI would be able to place at the service of the Institute the experienced gained by its personnel in working in the United Nations in Geneva and its potential as a Corporate body with consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).
The co-operation agreement between SED and FMSI was signed during a meeting held in Madrid, at the headquarters of SED. In the course of the meeting, the two organizations shared information and discussed suggestions for work, singling out concrete possibilities of collaboration in co-financing projects in Malawi and for Haiti, development of animation material on children’s rights, exchange of information to make best use of the respective means of communication and to improve their own visibility.
Meetings between FMSI and SED are now a regular thing and the two organizations meet once a year in Madrid and Rome alternatively. Despite their different nature and vocation (one International and centred on children’s rights, the other typically Spanish and devoted principally to education for solidarity), they have converging areas of activity in virtue of their common belonging to the Marist world of solidarity, education and social development.