Pedro Poveda Academy of Social Leadership
The International Academy of Social Leadership is a non-formal education project designed by the youth of Education for an Interdependent World (EDIW) to train themselves to be referents and enablers of inclusive, humane and sustainable societies. The leadership style chosen by this international group of young people is that of Pedro Poveda, Founder of The Teresian Association (TA) after whom the Academy is named. For the same reason, this project was born in partnership with the TA.
Lines of commitment and mission:
1
Offer training in the competencies necessary for young people to achieve leadership of reference and to acquire values to be able to collaborate and take part in the construction of participatory, creative and inclusive societies. With a strong collaborative character in the style of Poveda, it will work with projects in and with international groups from different countries from the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe.
2
Prepare and accompany the transition of young people to tertiary education from the training of generic competences for entering the university to those specific of the careers they undertake.
3
Prepare the entrance to the profession with the accompaniment support mechanisms in the new and emerging needs in post-pandemic employment and in the exercise of the profession as a task and humanizing experience.
4
Participate in seminars and activities of the United Nations Youth Forum -ECOSOC in collaboration with the Teresian Association in its consultative capacity in this body.
How was the Academy born?
In the summer of 2017, a Seminar on People who Made History took place in Madrid, Spain. This seminar emerged from the awareness of living in times of contrasts with great possibilities and strong limitations, in a society where tolerance and respect for human rights coexist vis a vis walls of exclusion, where significant searches in intercultural and interreligious dialogues live together with violence towards what is different, where we witness important gestures of solidarity and strong tendencies of apathy, indifference and even hostility to who and what is different. In this context, this seminar was conceived as a time to look at diverse societies over time and search in them contexts in which people assumed their reality with lucidity and made a difference in it. People who knew how to find a reason for faith and hope to live fully and fight for what was truly important for themselves and for the humanity for which they felt responsible … People whose capacity to believe opened paths of reference and life in their complex and contradictory societies.
This short intensive course with strong participation of the attendees through various workshops offered different platforms: critical-historical praxis, poetry, reflection, analysis of values and beliefs in different contexts of time and space and their impact on the society. It was carried out through case studies exploring different historical figures.
The last part of the seminar was an analysis session on the needs of European society in 2017 which led to the visioning of the International Leadership Academy. According to the group of young attendees, today's society needs social leaders with vision and commitment.
These leaders should be formed together and The International Academy of Social Leadership would be the place of formation and development. The group chose a type of leadership: that of Pedro Poveda’s, Founder of the Teresian Association and asked to partner with the latter. They also drafted a first design of the topics in which the leader should be trained.
The International Academy was launched in February 2018 by Maite Uribe, President of the Teresian Association, with a group of more than one hundred young people from four continents.
The design of the themes was completed in Covadonga at a meeting in September of that same year.
After the global experience of the pandemic and the need to rethink our world, the Pedro Poveda International Academy of Social Leadership regains a special urgency and is impelled with a new sense of commitment.