The author's publications are numerous and varied in genre. They include spiritual writings, education works, booklets on various topics, newspaper and magazine articles, and numerous lectures or oral presentations. His epistolary writings include more than 2,600 letters.

Servant of the Servants of God for perpetual memory  

"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world [...]. From now on, let no one make trouble for me: for I bear the marks of Jesus in my body" (Gal 6: 14,17).

Canonization Mass
Plaza de Colón, Madrid

Third Sunday of Easter, 4 May 2003

On May 4, 2003, in Madrid, Pope John Paul II canonized Pedro Poveda Castroverde, with Jesuit José Maria Rubio and religious Genoveva Torres, Angela de la Cruz, and María Maravillas de Jesús.

 By ÁNGELES GALINO CARRILLO.- This presentation discusses the pedagogical anthropology of Pedro Poveda with the desire to deepen into the relationship between his educational concepts and the man or woman to educate in accordance with them. This is not aseptic, as it might seem. Judging by the educational meetings –or conferences-, or by specialized publications, discussions focus on content, methods, techniques, organization, and others. Fundamental issues of pedagogy. However, relatively rarely the subject to be formed emerges at the forefront, the one about whom educators could and should say: "I am here because you are here."

By Card. PAUL POUPARD.- Always alert to the celebration of the anniversaries of eminent personalities in the field of education, science and culture, Monsieur René Maheu, active and tireless Director General of UNESCO, invites us this evening to celebrate, at the request of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, and Peru, the centenary of Fr. Pedro Poveda Castroverde, Spanish educator and humanist. Let us thank publicly such happy initiative.

By ARÁNZAZU AGUADO ARRESE.- On behalf of the Teresian Association, I most sincerely thank those who have come to this Congress. Especially the sponsors and associates who have made this event possible, and those that have given their support in various ways.

  Many voices have been raised to diagnose the present moment and express their claims to education. Reports from prestigious institutions have pointed the direction and horizons at the local level and internationally. Some, very recently and with undoubted success.   Thus, making a space for reflection on the education issue is not an isolated event. This Congress adds something and enters, so to speak, into the forum of educational concerns, human concerns shared by so many people, groups, almost at the beginning of a new millennium.  

The hundred years of socio-educational action of Pedro Poveda that this Congress celebrates with satisfaction and responsibility certainly speak of fruitful sowing of ideas and actions, and the way this union was realized: a most admirable coherence. This sowing can be considered a valuable initiative, because it speaks, in origin and development, of the capacity of proposal and fertility visible beyond the difficulties that always accompany the birth of an initiative. From today’s viewpoint, we can recognize in it an educational initiative with proven potential for impact in our multicultural societies.

Looking at Pedro Poveda as educator is to welcome the current validity of his thought and action. We are interested to recognize how he has been seen at different times in the elapsed century. But we no less want to see how his thought and action are reflected and realized in different cultures and contexts today.

His is a force that transcends the Spanish and European level where he started, precisely at the beginning of the century. The validity is explained because of the universal character of his ideas and his ability to open roads surpassing borders of different types.

Certainly in the case of Pedro Poveda it is needed, and it is beautiful, to insert at the outset his pedagogical contribution to the cultural field and understand his contribution to the history of humanity and the Church in the years that marked the turn of the century and the first third of the one that is about to end.

Pedro Poveda, Blessed Pedro Poveda, occupies a clear place in the history of educational processes. With them he committed himself to his own activity, writing tirelessly, creating institutions, and offering his cooperation to all initiatives that would lead to remedy situations and propose projects. Education of the popular classes, the professional association of teachers and social advancement, faculty training - fundamental concerns of Poveda-, as well as his achievements in the social and educational fields testify to his open and proactive spirit and the rightful place he occupies in the educational achievements of the twentieth century.

His thinking has been developed in a sequence of articulated statements about education, which together enclose an authentic humanism, which we always find attached to the concrete experience, to the test of truth which are the facts themselves, and to the survival of his ideas in countless educators of yesterday and today. We will always find in the expressions of Poveda’s style to educate the reference to the principles of personalizing education, inclusive, open, multicultural, communicative, rooted in Christian values, committed to the process of human growth for all involved in it, and social transformation. In short, guidelines that he considers indispensable for human fulfillment.

When we look today at the path followed by Poveda’s initiative in education, we find, therefore, specific embodiments which have given and give shape now to that proposal that was developed over the years and that has gained its physiognomy at various times and places.

Along with the initial achievements in the service of teacher training and collaboration in Spain, desire that has not stopped until today, we have to mention the deployment of his work and thought in America, Asia, Africa and a significant number of European countries. Today we can see various educational networks of international scope at the level of the university, the development of programs for human advancement, schooling at various levels, training of women, teacher training centers, promotion of publications, all fruit of a patient task in research, etc. Overall, a broad overview of efforts and collaborations.

Some innovation initiative has had particular impact on the educational environment, such as that developed in recent decades around personalized education.

Today we also have a multiplicity of extracurricular initiatives, involving valuable efforts to accommodate new educational situations in certain social spaces. And perhaps the biggest impact is offered by the large number of educators trained in the school of Poveda over many generations and who, in the gentle action of their daily work, serve society with true vocation.

We can say that Poveda’s initiative today takes place under the sign of globality. And perhaps this is one of the aspects that make it attractive and effective in the current interlace of proposals and perplexities that we detect in the educational field. The deepest requirement of globality is that in this historical juncture initiatives and human institutions are called to serve all human beings. Globality is both a way of being in the world, a way of seeing the world, and a way of living in this world.

Feeling part of a whole. One can understand oneself as a self-sufficient subject, like an island, or, conversely, feel and know oneself joyously a part of a whole, a whole human (the universal human family) and a cosmic whole (planet earth, the entire universe). At the same time, universality is a world view: as a community of peoples in the global human family.

Universality is also living according to the principle of responsibility: living the present with the awareness of being responsible for the future of the world. It involves a commitment of building a habitable and livable world for future generations, protecting the right to the future, while defending the rights of the future in the present.

Therefore, and with new elements that will be incorporated throughout this and other talks, we may well say that the validity of Poveda’s proposal in education participates, in its initial stages and in its present development, in the characteristics of globality because it includes an anthropology of communication among human beings, an overcoming of self-reliance, a practical sense of responsibility at this time.

But beyond the content of his proposal, we can extract from it something that makes great sense, in my view, in a Congress of these characteristics: a way to deal with large issues of educational endeavor today. Those he called "palpitating questions," or more precisely "engaging in the study of matters of throbbing interest " (P. Poveda, Alrededor de un proyecto, 1913).

It is fair that we are interested in clarifying what this means. Also those questions that today concern every educator and teacher, every responsible society not only deserve attention but willingness to enter into dialogue with them.

Poveda’s doing is made of an active capacity to intuit accurately, to question without acrimony, to propose decisively. Thus, doing in accordance with Poveda’s style is a mindset (to raise issues, to identify problems and to come into contact); a way of dealing that we can call technological (operational implementation of ways and means); a human spirit marked by responsibility and foresight, and political advocacy, that is, aware of their impact on citizenship. Surely all this involves a willingness to act. "Poveda is a famous educator, not one who studies and defines, but one of those who believe, who found, who build," someone wrote about him ("Claridades" February 8, 1917).

Thus, how should we deal, in accordance with Poveda’s style, with some fundamental issues of today’s educational reality? The series of articles collected in his publication Alrededor de un proyecto (1913) gives a good account of how to face the issue of the moment.

"The educational problem has not been granted, in general, the importance it deserves." "... Since the issue was not taken seriously, it was not studied. Had we taken it seriously, we would have done all we knew as we did for Spanish Literature, Theology, Philosophy and Natural Sciences ... It may be a wrong assessment; but I see that all our backwardness stems from not having given real importance to these issues, and we find ourselves in the predicament of treating them without knowing them, having dismissed them not to show our lack of preparation and educational background. Had we taken education seriously ... today we would have, why not! people, books, teachers, schools, methods, scientific material ..."

Pedro Poveda gives us a sign of the ability of facing the real situation and "look at it seriously,” as he would say on another occasion, that is, by doing a thorough analysis and present an active proposal. Inseparably connected to Poveda’s conception are the educational process and the transformation of society. This is highlighted in, among other studies, the last doctoral thesis centered on Poveda’s thinking on education and published under the title Pedagogy in times of crisis (Ramal, 1996). I quote:

"What he lived in Guadix would be repeated at various times in his life: a watchful eye discovering the possibilities offered by reality; a risky launch of a project; employ all forces to secure funding and collaborators for the realization of the plan; joy and vigor in daily work without discouragement; face obstacles and attacks, the negative ones received that threatened to limit the scope of his projects."

His subsequent contacts with the university sector in Oviedo during his stay in Asturias (1906-1913) allowed him to touch closely the political, educational, and religious problems that were circulating in the environment. Soon the academic world would receive the influence of his action, while he continued his incessant creation of Academies and Educational Centers. From 1914 until today Poveda’s initiative in the university arena promoted the creation of residences and student associations of all kinds, genuine opportunities for training.

And later, in Jaen and Madrid, until well into the 30s, he would keep alive his reflection and action cultivated throughout his life. His extensive epistolary for communication gives a good account of it.

Perhaps a first consequence of Poveda’s point of view to address the education issue forces us to say something of fundamental transcendence.  The time to return to education its proper place in the social dynamics has come. Surely we must place it in its entirety in the chapter on "the emerging". Whoever has a minimum sensitivity will not lack the capacity to see it. Sometimes emerging as a result of the efforts of some who are convinced more of the result than of their deserved recognition. Emerging because of the incisiveness of the issues that affect it. 

Poveda gives us the opportunity to work in this Congress so that such special place is given to education or at least so that education may earn a space, a road on public opinion and, more importantly, in the good work of many educators here present that need reinforcement and strong support to continue to play the noble role that occupies them. Hopefully this our reflection may also contribute, if only in small measure, to grant educational pedagogical concerns careful attention in educational policies.

Poveda was someone who was convinced that he understood well the determining influence of education in shaping the human stature of people, families, social spaces, and the negative consequences of its absence or minimized consideration thereof.
"When in a population there is abundant water, the municipality is not concerned if more or less amount of it is lost; but when it is limited, studies and calculations are used so that not a single drop is wasted, if possible. So it happens now with regards to the issue of education. Perhaps without being hyperbolic, he continues, we could ensure that we now have enough water to produce energy; but this energy, which is what we need to produce, cannot be produced without channeling well that which comes from all sources: effort, talent and money." (Alrededor de un proyecto, 1913).

I dare say that the main reform we need is to return to education the central place it deserves. Could our real “problem” today also be an educational "problem"?

The Teresian Association, which I preside, along with the actions being developed along this line, has looked into recent reflections on education among the emerging issues that shape society today. We wanted to do it with the sensitivity of our founder. And we have stressed the direction we need to move towards with an increasingly committed vision to a genuine understanding of education and its impact.

"It is necessary to train people to be active and participatory subjects; committed to justice, solidarity, human rights and peace. Not forgetting that the educational process takes place in everyday life and in different areas of our life: home, work, leisure, street, classroom, media, etc. "(Fe-culturas-justicia: Cuestiones emergentes, 1994).

This Congress will not alleviate the large themes of current educational issues and major areas of concern. Just look at the ambitious program that brings us together: educational engagement in the family and at school, the social reality and marginalization, the set of opportunities and risks in the world of the young, the irrevocable contribution of educational research, the right and duty of training educators, challenges of the techno-scientific society, the issue of women, the anthropological and theological roots that sustain Poveda’s pedagogical approach, etc.

As a starting point, I want to identify some of these important issues with which to dialogue in accordance with Poveda’s style to address educational concerns.

This presentation allows me to just name them, aware that each one includes within itself multiple themes and possible reflections:

• In the age of communication, the return of dignity.
• Given the phenomena of exclusion, inclusive education.
• Cultures and multiculturalism, an inescapable space.
• The schools we deserve.
• The difficult coexistence.
• The meeting of adults in the present situation.
• Educators, the methodological issue and the educational climate.

(To read the full article in Spanish, download the attachment to the bottom of this page).

ARÁNZAZU AGUADO ARRESE
President of the Teresian Association
President of the Congress on Education, Pedro Poveda educador. Vol. 2. Narcea Ed. Madrid, July 10-13, 1997

I have always been attracted by the booklets of Pedro Poveda on his educational project to found an “Institución Católica de Enseñanza” (Catholic Institution of Teaching). I was impressed by his desire to make "credible" his proposal to join the efforts and wills of teachers towards a common action: raise an educational movement and create institutions that would support this endeavor, establishing networks of mutual help in the professional work of educators.

In the 70s, this thought was accepted by a majority of teachers in Spain. It is the time of the great movements of pedagogical renewal, of believing in education as a transforming force of our social reality.

But the picture has changed substantially. Although global reports strive to present education as a key element of the "world resolutions" (King and Schneider, 1991), the aim is not merely instrumental and utilitarian but it is "aimed at the full realization of the human being, in all his wealth "(Delors, 1996). Teachers, in general, go through a dark and critical period in their professional development and teacher discomfort is a reality in many of our educational institutions.

Hargreaves expressively summarizes this situation at the end of his work Professorship, culture and Postmodernism:

"Teachers know that their work is changing, just like the world in which they operate. To the extent that the current structures and cultures of teaching are left as is, the task of responding to these complex changes and accelerate them away from isolation will only create a greater overload, intensification, guilt, uncertainty, cynicism, and massive abandonment. " (Haargreaves, 1996, p. 287).

I wanted to stress "away from isolation" because none of the suggested changes at the structural and cultural level in the field of education (or in any social field) are possible to perform in isolation. Knowledge is always a collective work of a human group.

And here is where I want to place the educational proposal from Poveda to educators. His context is very different from ours. The languages ​​and the needs are very different, too. Also, reflection and study on the professional development of teachers has been enriched by indubitable contributions worldwide and in our country. Moreover, the need to identify the professional fields of educators has grown dramatically. Professional development in non-formal education is a path that is strongly affirmed, not without difficulties. So why do I still believe in the validity of his proposal?

Throughout these months, I have been reading slowly texts from Poveda as well as the action taken by him. I think Pedro Poveda initiated a dialogue with educators that still continues.

The look

He looked at the reality of his time and told them about it. He invited them to look at it, to understand their needs, their expectations, their potential, their shortcomings, the forces of social, cultural and political action that moved them. But he also invited them to discover the depth of the mystery that gives meaning to life, transcending everyday reality without isolating it. This reflective capacity that we discover in Poveda is born out of the careful observation and commitment to reality, comprehensive and dynamic.

Today, he again invites us to look with sympathy at the world but also at our own reality –at the processes and people, institutions and life and discover their demands. How does the context affect educators? What are the forces, the potential for change that can occur within the current sociocultural processes?

The educator as protagonist of change

From this perspective, attentive to the reality of his time, projects emerged. And he offered to educators those projects of educational change. He counted on educators to build them. He thought of them to develop the projects. He believed they would not only be able to implement them but to project, dream together, build a culture of solidarity, where social groups hitherto excluded from it, would find a place. Thus they would be protagonists of change.

Today, again we need to understand ourselves as educators, strengthen our personal and professional recognition, strengthen our identity and the traits that define it.

We need to know ourselves capable of projecting a valid education for our students, immersed in a world characterized by fragility and fragmentation of socialization processes, traditionally linked to family and school. How can we talk to these generations, so different from ours?

The formation and action of educators as a community service experience

And Pedro Poveda started by doing. When in the last years of his life, he goes over his own history, he explains why he decided to take that step. "I invited everyone. Since no one undertook the implementation of the project, I started the first Academy as a means of giving shape to the idea. " (Poveda, 1935, cit. By Velázquez, 1987, p. 22.)

True to himself, Poveda, without giving up the project, starts a modest, concrete realization to give shape through this experience to his initial idea. But he was not alone in the way. No educational project is done alone. He began by inviting others to an action that required mutual support, solidarity, and teacher training. Since the proposal did not focus merely on a new curricular offering or a new methodology, but aspired to contribute, in a modest but real manner, to social transformation, the action he invited to was oriented to trigger learning processes, educational climates that would give rise to a new culture.

Today, since the educational field has expanded its action arena, the offer of Poveda suggests a way to introduce ourselves to them, if what we wish is to collaborate in the social reconstruction of our world. How can we create a culture of collaboration in our institutions? How can we work, within our everyday life, the research of our own practice, the training of professionals and educational action? How can we weave there a new style of relationship that allows us to make us better people, without closing ourselves in the comfortable niche of friends, but opening ourselves to the elements of an extraordinarily complex and violent world, which many times closes its borders to immigrants and at the same time is learning to navigate the information superhighway? How can we move forward in solidarity, knowing that we need each other in an interdependent world?

These are some of the concerns that guide our reflection on the educational proposal of Poveda for educators today.

(To read the full article download the attachment, in Spanish, at the bottom of this page).

In Atreverse a educar. Congreso de Pedagogía, Pedro Poveda educador. Vol. 2. Narcea Ed. Madrid 1998MARGARITA BARTOLOMÉ PINO
University of Barcelona
In Atreverse a educar. Congreso de Pedagogía, Pedro Poveda educador. Vol. 2.  Narcea Ed. Madrid 1998

By ARMANDO PEGO PUIGBÓ.- This article seeks to provide an overview of the historiographical treatment of the life and work of the priest and educator Pedro Poveda (1874-1936). Here are presented features of a unique Catholic teaching proposal in a secularized age. Poveda wanted to present the Christian message in state educational structures by encouraging dialogue between faith and knowledge. This modernization program also includes the hermeneutical keys of an era marked by the activities of the ILE (Initials of Institución Libre de Enseñanza).

Pedro Poveda (Linares, 1876-Madrid, 1936), priest and Spanish educator of the first third of the twentieth century, and founder of the Teresian Association, ought to be given a noteworthy prominence in the political and social circumstances of Spain and even Europe at the beginning of the XXI century. Such a role has been obscured by a set of historical, educational, and religious factors that should be analyzed and thought over at a time when the limits of secularism in Western democratic societies are being discussed.

In the following pages I will focus my presentation on the historiographical reasons that seem to have postponed the originality of Poveda’s work and on the new paths that are opening in the study of a key individual in Spanish education -not only Catholic- from the final stage of the Restoration to the Second Republic. Thus this is a contribution to the reception and analysis of one of the most unique proposals of Spanish Catholicism in the twentieth century from the viewpoint of cultural understanding.

Therefore, I will first analyze the literature on the protagonist and his work, both from the civil and religious points of view. Then I will raise some of the paradoxes that have occurred when studying his educational contribution (biographies, historical and social analyses, history of the Teresian Association, etc.). I will end with an assessment of future prospects offered by current research on our author and the traces he may leave on the approach to the study of contemporary religious history.

1.    PEDRO POVEDA, A FOOTNOTE ON A PAGE?

Seventy years after his death, when observing with perspective the image of Pedro Poveda projected by ecclesiastical and/or educational literature, one has the feeling of not being able to claim completely another one of the forgotten in contemporary Spanish culture. There are several reasons. Some are political. Among them, his tragic death on July 28, 1936, in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Other reasons are religious, such as his efforts to embody the Christian faith through the practice of lay women, mainly in public education. To this, as a cultural explanation, ignorance of his writings may be added.   Neither his recognition as "humanist and pedagogue" by UNESCO in 1974 on the centenary of his birth, nor his beatification in 1993 or canonization in 2003 have led to a greater dissemination of his life and work, hardly spread among the general public, misinterpreted or reduced in his originality to schemes that do not realize his complexity or his nuances.

Poveda did not found, in any way, a new religious congregation dedicated to teaching, but for the first time, even if relying on similar experiences in the field of private education, such as home teachers Associations promoted by Jesuit Fr. Tarin, he designed a program that would offer teachers and Christian teachers the opportunity to organize and participate in the process of building a national school of state character based on the principles of their faith. Inspired by the theological and spiritual model of "the early Christians,” citizens with equal rights and duties to others in a society immersed in a period of secularization, he wrote Ensayo de Proyectos pedagógicos. Following this publication, he founded what later became known as the Teresian Association. As an association of lay women dedicated to teaching, primarily in public schools, his ideal began to crystallize around his Academies as training centers, in close collaboration with official Teacher Training schools. The idea was to contribute to achieving the ultimate goal of making present the Christian message, through adequate preparation of teaching professionals, in state educational structures.

Both the emphasis on the associative character, in line with professional and pedagogical concerns of the time, and the thrust to the leading role that women could eventually develop in academia, beginning with primary education, make Poveda a thinker and organizer that can not be just confined to the scope of Catholic "intelligence." He should be studied in the historical context of one of the most fruitful stages of Spanish culture, which influenced him and in which he would leave a mark. Note also his constant social concern, since his years as a young priest in Guadix, where he founded a school for children of the caves in 1902, until the end of his life, having been a member of both the Central Board against Illiteracy and the Hermandad del Refugio. As Dolores Gómez Molleda said:

«his concern about the education of the popular classes, the professional association of teachers and social advancement, the pedagogical updating of teachers, and the renewal of teaching methods and their achievements in the social-educational field, place him in an important place in the modern and reformist educational movement.»

His innovative vision of lay apostolate, through the Christian presence in state structures, precisely reflects the profound impact of the modernization process experienced by Spanish society between the Revolution of '68 and the Second Republic. Trying to overcome a confessional stance marked by catechetical zeal, Poveda tried to harmonize the exemplary witness of a Christian life with a scientific training in accordance with the requirements of the moment, beyond controversies over teaching catechism, while remaining faithful time to Papal teaching. For him, faith and knowledge are not set against each other, in a time when certain sectors supported an antagonism between the two with conviction. What could be done, in his opinion, was, on the contrary, articulate a dialogue, taking into account the complex power relations of a society that demanded the autonomy of public life: "Thinking about the amendment of the legislation, when each new law is a step towards secularism, would be equivalent to thinking of an unattainable remedy.” Faced with this attitude and through the foundation of what he called Catholic Institution of Teaching, which failed to materialize, he proposed the following in his Ensayo de proyectos pedagógicos:

«Train, according to the Christian spirit and according to the best teaching methods, a body of teachers of primary education, who would take annually the required competitive exams in order to obtain the largest number of positions in public schools; and second, maintain by all means possible, and exerting the best efforts, the Christian spirit and professional union in all teachers belonging to the Association."»

Assuming the novelty of such an approach, as well as the difficult balance that caused this proposal to be placed on the borders of the usual Catholic practice in those years, the following pages are an endeavor to account for both the historiographical reception of this proposal and indicate the possible lines of action, making them historically intelligible. Otherwise, it should be recognized, with Cioran, that in the case of Poveda, it has an ironic validity to affirm that "man makes history; in turn, history destroys him. He is the author and subject, agent and victim." 

(To read the full article, in Spanish, download the attachment to the bottom of this page)

ARMANDO PEGO PUIGBÓ. Universitat Ramon Llull,
in Hispania Sacra, LIX 120, July-December, 2007, 707-740, ISSN: 0018-215-X

In 2002 the Socio-educational Proposal "Educating in Difficult Times" began in America with the commitment to promote quality education, humanizing and transforming, for everyone, inspired by Poveda’s pedagogical thought.

 Starting at that time many initiatives and activities developed in each country where the Teresian Association is present. The aim is to review and update pedagogical frameworks and to create new programs and actions taking into account the current context and strategic lines of the proposal. Because of this, a movement of educators has been generated.

Presentation

When Pedro Poveda, a young priest, full of dreams and enthusiasm, began his evangelizing action in the caves of Guadix in the early twentieth century, he could not imagine the future development of his intuitions and projects.

Throughout his life, these early ideas, these first projects to articulate evangelization, education and social advancement, were maturing, acquiring different rootedness and developments. His dreams, projects, and actions, seed sown on good ground has borne much fruit. Because when the seed falls on every piece of land that welcomes it, the seed becomes one with the land and, without losing its deepest identity; as it germinates it acquires the wealth of the land where it has been planted.

The prophetic intuition of Pedro Poveda, born out of the reality of Guadix, and of the wide and deep look at the society of his time from the mountains of Covadonga, is a seed and a fundamental point of reference for the development of what we now call the socio-educational proposal of the Teresian Association.

"I I have my mind and heart in the present moment.” "I want human lives." "True Humanism”. "Value justice as much as life" "Give me a vocation and I will give you back a school, a method and a pedagogy." “With the spirit I place knowledge and I consider that both spirit and knowledge constitute the essence of the Asociation." "Until Christ be formed in you" ...

I invite each and everyone, every teacher, every educator who lives his/her educational task like salt in the style of the early Christians, teams in different contexts that put their energies into creating educational environments where people grow, to continue their task. Let us continue at this time of crossroads, in the school Poveda, allowing him to speak to our hearts, and that we may hear the words that will bring out each day in the joyful and difficult situations, the light and strength that sustains us in the daily task of daring to educate.

It has been one hundred years ... We enter into a new millennium. The seed sown in Guadix is ​​now present in different parts of the world. In Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. In different countries, peoples and cultures. In each of these realities it is generating life, much life, much dynamism and generosity in the continuing search for projects and actions that articulate evangelization, education, and social advancement.

Almost 75 years ago, in 1928, this seed was planted in America. First in Chile, and slowly it germinated and grew in different countries. Today it is also present in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, the United States, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In each country there have been new socio-educational projects that have developed inspired by that seed. In Latin America, a real network of experiences and projects, encouraged for years by the Council for Culture of the Teresian Association, has been established, as well as opportunities for exchange, deepening and mutual support. The awareness that unity and diversity need eachother is becoming increasingly stronger and more rooted.

It is harvest time. Let the seed penetrate again into our best life energies with its transforming and mobilizing force. Different teams are being challenged. In Cochabamba (Bolivia), in a conference organized by the Council for Culture in 1998, the idea emerges: we have walked a lot, projects have worked through their identity and specificity. It is time to build together the Socio-educational Proposal of the Association in Latin America. The teams are launched. It has been four years of intense collective work, locally and across the continent, advised by specialists in education, with educational seminars and conferences in different countries. With the efficient and generous contribution of Poveda Cultural Center of the Dominican Republic.

Today Latin America wants to give Pedro Poveda, in the year we celebrate the centenary of the beginning of his evangelization in the caves of Guadix the fruit of your dreams, we dare to say.

This proposal, Educating in Difficult Times, an expression inspired by Poveda, wants to be a reference point for all social and educational projects, for each educator, for each educator in Latin America that is committed to the educational and evangelizing action promoted by the Teresian Association. It also wants to be a contribution to the dialogue and exchanges with centers and projects in other countries and continents.

May Pedro Poveda make fruitful the educational work of each of the centers and social projects in the continent and help us make his words alive: 

“Our works give testimony and speak with unmatched eloquence about what we are" (1919)

Loreto Ballester Reventós
President of the Teresian Association
Los Negrales, July 28, 2002

Web of the Socio-educational project http://pseitperu.blogspot.com.es/