The Fe y Alegría FAQs

As the General Coordinator of the International Association Fe y Alegria, I have visited the 20 countries where this movement has an autonomous legal residence and activities tailored to the diverse settings in which it works to fulfil our mission. During my interviews to the media and my conversations with individuals interested in learning more about Fe y Alegria, I noticed that – in spite of the diversity of questions – the talks evolved around a set of general questions that we could call the FAQs of Fe y Alegría. In this article, I would like to define the scope of these substantial questions.

1. What are the origins of Fe y Alegría?

Our spiritual roots, out of which our institutional movement was born and stays alive up to present after sixty years, are undeniable: our values are the foundation of our actions to live and experience Christian Faith, precisely our service to the poor and the active respect of their dignity. Our entity is part of the Catholic Church and was founded in Caracas in 1955 by the Jesuit priest José Mª Vélaz with the support of the construction worker Abraham Reyes and his wife Patricia and in cooperation with a group of university students and several very young female teachers. It is currently led by the Jesuit Order that organizes its activities and exercises its legal representation in each country. It is in fact a movement to promote education and social development, sponsored by the Church and supported by the cooperation of 170 different congregations, mostly religious ones, but also a number of diverse secular groups in management and operative roles. We are talking about a project that relies on the participation of 40,000 people from diverse spiritual backgrounds and of 1,000 religious individuals out of which only 100 are jesuits. This reflects a shared and continuous acceptance of diverse orientations derived from the integrative core of the Gospel: service to the poorest.

2. Why does Fe y Alegría define itself as a Movement?

Fe y Alegría perceives itself as a Movement because it is a project dedicated mostly to educational action and social development. It is capable of reinventing itself and of shaping its organizational structure. We are convinced that education in its multiple facets is the greatest driving force of change within society and able to restore dignity of the poor through knowledge, science, work, as well as ethical and civic behaviour. Even if the institutional Mission and Vision of Fe y Alegría has conserved the seeds of its founding principles, each of the subsequent Strategic Plans of its International Association introduced changes to the formulation of Mission and Vision with the goal of adapting better to its own purpose. In order to transform today’s empowerished and excluded world, the Movement’s Mission gives priority to the values of justice, freedom, participation, fraternity, respect of diversity and solidarity. This set of values outlines today’s open-ended profile of the person eligible to work for Fe y Alegría, i.e. an enthusiastic supporter of a social project that goes beyond its religious orientation without denying it and that drives all people towards the common mission of the Kingdom of God.

3. Is Fe y Alegría an educational movement?

From 1985 to 2012, the number of beneficiaries supported by Fe y Alegría grew from 285,000 to 1,500,000, and the global presence of the organization increased from 797 to 3,018 geographic locations; but in spite of the general concept of Fe y Alegria being “schools”, 40% of our beneficiaries are in reality not students but participants in social projects such as work groups, permanent and community education, food safety, learning and production groups, self-administered workshops, shelters and educational institutions for migrant women, homes for indigenous people, etc. The holistic concept of Fe y Alegria means that we always accomplish an educational task, either at elementary or secondary school or at the workshop, within the rural or mining communities, on the radio, in the neighborhood or at our technical education offices. We have practically banned the word professor or teacher from our institutional vocabulary and universalized the term educator so that everyone being part of Fe y Alegría becomes aware of their participation in one single educational mission, in a way that everyone – be it the director, or a secretary, or the doorman, or the social worker, or the radio moderator, or the lady cooking the school lunch – understands that relationships are built always and everywhere with a human attitude based on values. Transformation is not achieved by the mere transmission of content, but by dedication and affection to show how to pass on one’s own life. If we act in the world of how, every individual, regardless of the type and level of his/her work, can become an educator.

4. Is the education at Fe y Alegría public or private?

An exciting topic at Fe y Alegría is the relation between private and public. We are not satisfied being considered as a private education institution as this generally comes with a classy, elitist and confessional connotation. The education we provide is free and secular in a positive sense, focused on cohabitation of spiritual orientations in the context of democratic and constitutional citizenship. We select the location of our schools or social work centres based on the poverty index. No selection is made based on money, intelligence (although at some point we made that mistake!) or religion (unfortunately we also did that at some time!): most logical is admission according to the first-come-first-served-principle as soon as the Ministry of Education approves the start of enrolments. Due to these factors in combination, we consider ourselves as a public education institution, and even more at those facilities where we have achieved payment of our educators through public funds and where the State also cooperates in management and operational duties. In fact, approximately 85 percent of the expenses of our educational system are covered by public resources from the Ministries of Finance and Governance and the local municipalities. Education is a human right, protected and monitored by the State in which privately managed non-profit institutions ensuring high quality can collaborate and interrelate significantly with the public administration. We are pedagogues and professionals from diverse fields with officially recognized degrees and form working groups based on our educational motivation within the margins of Law with the goal of providing education of excellent quality.

5. How was the relationship between Fe y Alegría and the different political regimes?

The relationship between each national branch of Fe y Alegría with its respective governments has been continuous and, in spite of the different levels of commitment among countries, has not diminished but rather increased and improved. Even in countries with weaker ties between their governments and the Church, the work of Fe y Alegría is recognized and appreciated by the public administration. It is obvious that within some political camps it is not acceptable to show appreciation of a Church project, and Fe y Alegría is one!, but in many cases those politicians choose a Fe y Alegría institution for the education of ther children although they express an adverse opinion. On the other hand, it is evident that no Latin American President – and hopefully this can also be said for their African counterparts at some point – has ever pronounced or manifested opposition to Fe y Alegría in public. Voiced by a President, it would be a very unpopular discourse as Fe y Alegría is deeply rooted in the marginal sectors, and in addition I think that what they really feel is honest appreciation apart from the professional considerations and complications they need to face in their political role. Although we do not have relevant statistical information, we can say in this respect that many graduates from Fe y Alegría institutions are now holding positions of political and technical responsibility, also in the governmental circles of so-called populist governments.

6. Which are the challenges of Fe y Alegría?

Fe y Alegría has conserved up to present its vitality and enthusiasm that have characterized the organization since its foundation. The term border its the main feature of its current work with regard to the challenge of providing an educational offer of the highest quality while achieving a stronger and better integration of the socially and culturally excluded groups.

Through its presence in most Latin American and Caribbean countries, its priority of today is to reinforce its educational and social mission in Africa and Madagascar. We are currently undergoing a crucial paradigm change by recognizing that approaching the poorest comes with a competent use of the new information and communication technologies. To avoid repeating the past, we need to engage in profound and participatory reflections. This is why we have launched an institutional innovation process that allows us to stay at the heart of Fe y Alegría while adopting a new approach to managment based on the responsible use of modern resources.