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Champagnat Global Week 2024: the opportunity to walk and grow together

First Day of Champagnat Global Week 2024

Champagnat Global Week 2024 kicked off with the first session on Monday focusing on all the advantages of the Marist Network of Schools and learning about experiences and opportunities on how to interact with Champagnat Global. During the two sessions that took place at 9am and 4pm (Rome time) around 300 people connected to the webinars.

First of all, Javier Llamas, Executive Secretary of Champagnat Global greeted all the participants of the webinar on behalf of the Directors of the Secretariat for Education and Evangelisation, Br José Sánchez Bravo and Br Niño Pizarro. Javier also introduced how the Champagnat Global Week 2024 will be developed, which will be dedicated to each of the networks that animate the Institute.

Afterwards, we had a moment of prayer in which the participants were able to develop a moment of interiority guided by a video prepared by Marists Australia at the biennial meeting of directors that they had last July. This video helps us to find God in everyday things and moments:

Ernesto Sanchez, Superior General, in which he sent his greetings. ‘We are truly an international family where all of us who are part of this educational community feel connected,’ he said. He also explained the importance of networking in the Institute.

The aim of today’s session was to learn how Champagnat Global generates advantages in which to participate with the whole school community and the participants had the opportunity to hear different testimonies of people who have already benefited from the advantages of the network.

Among the testimonies that participants have encountered were:

Br. Kevin Wander (Provincial Secretary Star of the Sea): ‘One of the things I identified as a need is that people working in isolation in formation don’t have a lot of support, so we organised a group in Agora: Marist Formation. The potential of this group is to do with schools. I encourage you to participate in it.

Dr. Mark Bussin (Director MSC): ‘I have made many friends and learned about the Marist world through Champagnat Global. We are part of a wider community than we realise. We use Agora and it helps us get in touch with other Marists around the world. In addition, Mark highlighted some of the exchanges that have taken place both in person and through virtual activities.

Dr. José Antonio Rosa (MRE Mission Secretary) who, referring to John 17, 21 ‘that all may see that we are one’ José Antonio explains: ‘We were asked to be more Marist Europe and we looked for resources that could help us to achieve this objective, among which was Champagnat Global. We needed a place to share our reflections and we created five groups in Agorà that would allow forums, activities, to post our reflections and that there would be a history of what we were doing. It has been a working space and it has given us so much fruit that we were able to involve the secretaries and provincials. It is essential to have people actively involved in these groups.

Jorge Radic (Executive Secretary CEIS Marist): ‘We have had the opportunity to develop different exchanges from Chile with other Marist places. The idea of connecting is to have an impact on the students, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense. We must be clear about two concepts: opportunity and experience’.

Santiago González (former director of Colegio Hidalgo de Cocula – Mexico): ‘I included as a criterion in the choice of destinations in Global Run that they should be English-speaking so that the students would know the importance of knowing other languages. Some of the challenges we faced were establishing contact with the schools and the time differences. The most important learning was the experience of knowing that we are a global family.

There are numerous activities to participate in the network, one of which is through news, where you can find all the news from Marist schools around the world. Another of the activities offered by Champagnat Global is the Global Run, where, through sport, numerous schools are connected to carry out activities with the students. There are also other one-off activities such as the webinar we held in June ‘Together to look beyond’. We have also made progress in training and this week we will launch the 2nd edition of the Marist Global Citizenship Course, another course on Artificial Intelligence applied to education and another on Problem Based Learning. Agora groups are also available to connect with the school community.

As the 2nd edition of the Global Citizenship Mooc Course begins today, Br Jeff Crowe, its main author, participated in today’s sessions to explain the aims of this course in the Marist world. ‘This programme is about feeling that we are part of something bigger.

The idea is to move from a local mentality to a global one and to have a global heart. To make that transition within ourselves means that if we have a global mindset it also increases our global awareness and we are more open to the new. This course makes us grow as human beings.

If you have not been able to connect, you have the opportunity to watch it in the following videos:

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