An address given to the faculty and staff at Forest Ridge (Seattle), March 1, 2004

I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to Mary Smith for receiving me here at the school, for enabling me to experience today something of your life, and for inviting me to share on the subject of global education. When I was preparing what I might say, I immediately went to your excellent website to help me understand your context. Needless to say, I was very impressed by what I read, and excited by all that you are doing: the joint learning projects, the communication across cultures, the opportunities provided for students for living experiences in another culture, and the opportunities to practice skills to resolve problems and issues of misunderstanding. Today, I have experienced some of this first hand, in meeting the students and hearing all they are engaged in. You have achieved much, and this has been particularly recognised by the recent award by the E.E. Ford Foundation to fund global Programs at the school. I congratulate you warmly, and wish you every success in the developments that this grant will enable you to undertake.

In response, I would like to share with you something of what Sacred Heart schools are doing in other countries, as well as educational concerns and ventures in which religious of the Sacred Heart are currently involved, as a way of myself participating in this global education.

First of all, however, I would like to pick up on the strengths of the school, and perhaps challenge you to go yet deeper into two particular aspects of global education. Goal Three of Sacred Heart schools, which commits the school ‘to educate to a Social awareness that impels to action’ has two criteria that I would particularly like to highlight. I will take criteria number four, first, “the curriculum includes the study of the welfare of our earth and its limited resources”.

In anticipating my visit here, the name ‘Forest Ridge’ conjured up for me the image of a rich and lush environment, green spaces and beautiful views. I find the reality is even more stunning. I am sure that you yourselves must delight in all that your environment offers, and you must be in awe of all the natural resources that surround you. I want to suggest, that such an appreciation of environmental richness, must surely go hand in hand with the responsibility we have for sustaining our environment, for the sake of health, of sustainability, of peace - and not just for ourselves, but for every human being .Global education must more urgently than ever include education towards solidarity in relation to the environment. Relevant education on this aspect of the common good, and involvement in the global , lies first of all in understanding our ecological and environmental responsibility, and secondly in understanding the connectedness of this responsibility to that of economic development and the well-being of all peoples.

In developing this idea, I would like to touch on three aspects of justice in relation to our environment.

In the first place, God’s gift to us of the world calls us to embrace not only social justice, that is, relations between people, but also ecological justice, meaning just relations between human beings, with other creatures and with the earth itself. Justice to all created things, is the recognition and valuing of all that God has created, a respect for life in all its forms.

Secondly, there are also issues of justice in terms of how we use our natural resources, and I would like to develop this theme a little. As members of the human race, we have been entrusted with the care and protection of natural resources, and we as individuals and as groups cannot shirk that responsibility. Climate change is one of the most serious challenges facing the world in the 21st century. Continually, we need to make ourselves aware of the crisis which our planet, our home, faces in the beginning of a new millennium. When I say ‘we’ I mean the whole human family, and how we respond to this will depend on where we live. For those who live in societies and countries characterised by consumerism and materialistic values, ways to live in harmony with creation will differ from those who live in societies and countries where the basic essentials to live a dignified human life hardly exist. The well-being of the oceans, forests, the atmosphere, animals, fisheries and plant species is now a concern beyond just nation states and their governments. Furthermore, when we consume our resources faster than they can be replaced, or exhaust non-renewable resources without concern for future generations, we have to know that we are robbing their capital.

Environmental issues oblige us to redefine the common good in global terms As we know, it is necessary today to develop structures capable of protecting the global environment. This means developing and supporting international institutions - for example the United Nations, or international agreements such as the Kyoto protocol. – this latter being the first legally binding international agreement on environmental protection to reduce greenhouse gases. To become operational, this agreement must be ratified by the 55 states, and there are 46 so far. Also, ratification must include states producing 55% of world greenhouse gas emissions, which means most major industrial states, must ratify. Few have yet done so.

It comes as no surprise to us, that apart from the crisis to the planet itself, how we use our resources has direct consequences for thousands of our brothers and sisters. For example, rising sea levels will have a devastating impact on numerous communities. Particularly vulnerable are those people living in low-lying island states, in heavily populated coastal areas of many countries, and on river deltas, and the poor countries affected by debilitating droughts and floods. One estimate is that by 2020 up to three-quarters of the world’s population could be at risk of drought or floods. Impoverished countries will suffer disproportionately from climate change - in part because of their geography and in part because they lack resources.

Another example. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) representative said at a UN Conference in November 2001, that the harvests of some of the world’s key food crops, such as wheat, rice and corn, could drop by up to 30% over the next 100 years due to global warming. These findings indicate that large numbers of rural people in developing countries are already facing acute hunger and malnutrition.. (Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 7th Conference of Parties (COP 7) in Morocco in November 2001). An example, closer to our experience perhaps, that of water. We know that water is an essential element not only for growing crops and raising animals, but also for people’s very survival. Yet water scarcity is widespread. In many rural areas water tables are falling, wells are contaminated and a rapidly decreasing water flow is available. Competitive claims on water resources by irrigation, industry and urban domestic consumers often favour the more powerful, leaving the less powerful thirsty. More than half the world’s major rivers are being seriously depleted and polluted, so that millions of people flee their homes, out-numbering war-related refugees. Typhoid, malaria, dengue, cholera, and other water-related diseases are responsible for over five million deaths every year. One could go on.

I am now already touching on to the third aspect of justice in relation to the environment. The direct consequences of the misuse of resources by the relatively few, advantaged populations, are poverty, disease, malnutrition and increased mortality for disadvantaged populations. We hear this so often but wonder how we can change anything, how we can educate to greater responsibility. Looking again at the example of water, perhaps we can come closer to home. Predictions are that by the year 2025 two thirds of the world’s population will not have access to sufficient drinking water. Many multinational corporations look at this crisis for humanity as an economic opportunity. Under the rules of the World Trade Organisation, multinationals are enabled to buy and sell water rights in the country of their choice. For example, in 1998, a Canadian company received permission to take 156 million gallons of Lake Superior water every year and sell it in Asia. The Swiss Nestle Corporation, owner of 68 bottled water companies, pumps water from Lake Michigan at a profit of $1.8 million dollars a day. It is also well documented that, for example, the European Union puts developing countries under pressure to hand over their water supply to European countries. When we also discover that approximately 25% of bottled water is merely tap-water, perhaps it is a moment to take stock of our consumerist lifestyle!

I have dwelt somewhat on the concrete in order to reflect on how we as educators can make a difference. Perhaps we can ask ourselves some questions.

• Can we model ways of conserving resources and making life-style changes that would help sustain resources?
• Can we educate our students to an awareness that there is an international common good transcending local and national boundaries? Can we open them to an understanding of the urgency of this situation?
• How can we educate our students to become critical and politically-aware citizens, who have a global conscience, who will recognise and oppose policies that protect only the good of the local, and reject or disregard that of the global?
• You could think of other points of entry into this reflection, I know.

This now leads me to the other criteria that struck me in relation to global education, and which I would like to invite you to reflect on. This is criteria five - “the school has programs which enable each member of the school community to be engaged in effective action for social change”. My thoughts arise out of all that I have read about your efforts on behalf of disadvantaged peoples, particularly students in countries of the south, and these are truly admirable and very generous. I realise that here in Washington, you have an orientation both towards the Latin countries of the South, as well to the countries of Asia and the Pacific. I note too, that you have also educated yourselves to an awareness of Africa, and its situations of need, and you have responded with initiative and generosity.

As a European, I have a background of strong and varied relationships with the continent of Africa, initiated by the colonisation movement across Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As children, we collected our pennies to save black babies – at five shillings a time we could have a baby named after us. We also sewed clothes for the children who went naked to school. Our elders were ‘developing’ the land, bringing ‘civilisation’ and ‘progress’ to the people. Nowadays we shudder to remember such paternalistic, protective, and exploitative approaches to our African brothers and sisters. And yet, this attitude continues on a global scale, often in a much more subtle way, and certainly with more devastating effects, and we can unknowingly contribute towards it.

In the Society of the Sacred Heart, at our centre in Rome, we send out regular communications to our religious sisters in different countries. These are headed by the Sacred Heart logo of the world enclosed in the heart. In the last few years we have adapted this, graphically giving a central position to the continent of Africa, because we want to keep this continent in the centre of our minds and hearts. Our reasoning is not simply that we want to find ways of helping our schools and projects in those countries where we have communities, or other situations in need. Of course this is important to us. But, more importantly, we want to remind ourselves of what riches Africa holds for itself and for all peoples. The deep, age-old cultures, which respects as central, allegiance to the family and the tribe; spiritualities that are close to nature and to our origins; lives that are lived in deprivation and suffering, but which retain a natural dignity; the struggle to retain a hunger for education, and for the rights of every human being.

Here I would like to mention a recently published book by a French journalist, Anne Cecile Robert, who is an associate professor at the Institute of European studies in Paris. She asks if it is not indeed the West, not Africa, who needs assistance, and if it is not the Continent of Africa who needs to come to the aid of the West? Her book, ‘L'Afrique au secours de l'Occident’ – ( Africa coming to the aid of the West) is openly provocative, proposing that we might radically reverse the currently held view of our globalized world. Whilst the Western model is in the process of gobbling up the planet, she argues that Africa, in drawing from its cultural inheritance, could bring a vision of a more harmonious and more balanced relationship between human beings and nature. Without creating a myth out of Africa, without denying the dramatic situation of the continent , the book suggests that the alleged " delayed development " of Africa could be seen as the expression of a formidable cultural resistance to a devastating economic model. It suggests that by shifting one’s view of Africa, one arrives at a radical critique of our own life-styles and of the values involved in and caused by globalisation. It is a view-point worth exploring.

In relation to this focus, yet with a different emphasis, I want to refer to an organisation called the Africa Europe Faith and Justice Network (AEFJN). This has been established in the last several years, by missionary and international congregations of religious based in Europe. The Society of the Sacred Heart is an active member. The AEFJN is based on the principle of having ‘antennae’ or groups of people in each European and African country, who are present where political decisions are made concerning economic relations between Africa and Europe. As a network, we inform one another on issues of structural injustice rooted in European policies that affect Africa adversely. We support one another in lobbying our international political decision makers and the European Institutions, so as to influence positively decisions taken by the European Union that affect adversely the peoples of Africa.

What I am suggesting is, that in many situations we could be helped and challenged by a change of approach, of mentality’, and by re-examining the manner of our involvement in activities for the developments of peoples. Therefore, in widening our understanding of global education we might want to ask ourselves further questions :

• How can we encourage our students to “effective action for social change” in favour of the most powerless, on the global level?
• How can we educate our students to political awareness, towards the eventual exercising of their voting rights for the benefit of all peoples?
• In what ways can we work with populations who are most marginalised and exploited, rather than simply for them?
• In working with the poorest and most disadvantaged, how can we learn from them and be changed by them?
• At the spiritual level, can we be helped in the contemplation of our reality by seeing with the eyes of the poor and the powerless, with the gaze of Jesus whose preferential love for the weakest forms the basis of the Good News?

I would now like to share with you something of what other Sacred Heart schools are engaged in with regard to global education. I have mentioned Africa more than once, so I must refer to the new primary at school at Kyamusansala which you know of so well through your generous financial support, and the formal opening of which I was present at last July. What a magnificent occasion it was, the school’s very existence a powerful witness to the generosity of so many schools of the Sacred Heart in other continents! What impressed me most, however was the presence of a group of 14 students from St.Catherine’s College, Armagh, Northern Ireland, one of the network of Sacred Heart schools in Ireland, who had come to join their younger African sisters on this important occasion. They had already been there for two weeks, landscaping the ‘garden’ around the school, and planting tress and shrubs they had bought with money raised back home. They also spent the two weeks helping the younger ones with their study, playing games with them, and learning their way of life.

As I am most familiar with Sacred Heart schools in Europe, I can share other examples of global education in schools there. Again touching on Africa, the Sacre Coeur in Hamburg, Germany, shared with myself and our Superior General Clare Pratt on our recent visit there, their inter-actions with the Kangole girl’s school in Karamojo, Northern Uganda, which is run by a community of our sisters. The girls in Kangole lack the bare necessities of life, but are hungry for education. They are therefore thrilled to be in written communication with students at Sacre Coeur, and both sides are learning much from one another. The Hamburg students send gifts of books, writing materials etc .to help their African sisters, but what is valued is the possibility for the sharing of such different realities. In another European country, Spain, in Pamplona, the entire student body of Sagrado Corozon are engaged in projects on Africa, in all its aspects, and at a very practical level. In England the pupils of Sacred Heart, Hammersmith, London, have become linked with Villa Jardin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, helping to raise funds for the education of the poorest children, as well as studying the causes and effects of the economic situation in Argentina. You will yourselves be familiar with the activities of our schools in Australasia and Japan, with Central and South America, because of your relationship and exchanges with them, so I will not say more.

As you will know, formal education in the context of schools, colleges and Universities, whilst still crucially important, is no longer the primary way in which religious of the Sacred Heart are involved in education today, so I would like to say just a little about this too. Throughout the world, religious and their collaborators are educating children, young people, women and men of all ages through a variety of educational projects. These are referred to as informal education, popular education, development education or situational education.

This sphere of education includes health care, such as the centre I visited just over a year ago in Patna, Northern India, where one of our sisters runs a clinic for the homeless families living on the streets, and where she trains mothers in basic health and nutritional care. It includes a skills centre in the rural interior, west of Mumbai, where another of our sisters educates women to self-reliance and self-esteem through the acquisition of income-generating skills. Then again, in visiting our community in Ayutla, in Southern Mexico, I witnessed a highly-organised educational programme for the twenty four villages that make up the local parish, a programme which, devised in collaboration with them, and drawing on their sense of community, aimed to enhance the basic living conditions of all, by means of co-operative efforts. Then there are other ministries among women, for example in Karamojo in Northern Uganda, Africa, where we have Sister Paulina working with groups of Karamojong women to try to bring peace among these tribes. Whilst I was there last July, Paulina reported on a recent meeting, where one woman had asked “ Is our talking together of any use?” Another replied “Yes! Last week my son came to me for my blessing before going on a cow raid, and I refused him. He beat me up, but he did not go on the raid!”

There are the ministries with children, as for example the ‘shelter’ in Seoul, Korea where runaway girls are received and given a home, and supported in their efforts at rehabilitation. Then there are the religious involved in legal advocacy on behalf of asylum seekers, the teaching of language to refugees, psychotherapy and other care for victims of torture – this work of informal education I have witnessed in my own country and in many countries of Europe Here in the United States, you will know of the enormous variety of similar educational projects that our sisters are involved in, as well as the vital support given to the network of schools.

I would now like to share with you something of the recent developments in the Society of the Sacred Heart today, ways in which we are trying to live out the charism handed down to us by St. Madeleine Sophie, a charism which has always been to know and to make known the love of the Heart of Christ for all people. This has been made concrete in many ways, and continues to be so, but what is common is education to justice through gospel values, the promoting of the right of every person to life, to freedom, to ones own future, to being loved and to love.

In looking at the newer activities, I have already mentioned our participation with the AEFJN in many countries of Europe and Africa. I understand there has begun a similar network in the United States, but I am not sure of its present status.

In a similar move both to educate ourselves, as well as to be actively involved at an institutional level for systemic social change, the Society of the Sacred Heart has now applied for and received Associative status with the Department of Public Information at the United Nations. We have our own full-time permanent representative, one of our religious who is an international lawyer, originally from Europe but now part of the United States Province. She works collaboratively with the representative of the IBVM congregation from a joint office in New York. The Department of Public Information publicizes United Nations activities around the world, on such issues as peace, economic and social development, human rights and humanitarian affairs. It also promotes UN observances and International Years (for example the International year of the Child, last year’s International year of fresh water etc.) in order to focus world attention on important issues facing our world. By being associated with this Department, we are in a position to receive all the latest information on these activities, to publicise the UN work, and so to be informed of their activities in countries all round the world. However, our association is more than just receiving and publishing information. By having status at the UN, we are in a position as an Non Governmental Organization, to bring concerns we may experience at the grass-roots level, to the attention of a variety of committees at the UN, in order to influence both policy and action by the UN on a world-wide basis.

In conclusion, I want to say how much it delights me to see the way in which the tradition of Sacred Heart education is carried on at this school, and how the spirit is so recognisable! When St. Madeleine Sophie founded the first Sacred Heart schools, following the Revolution in France and the enormous political upheaval in Europe, her vision was the transformation of society, so that women and men might live in freedom, self-fulfilment and in right relation to God and their fellow human beings. Her way then was through the education of women, something in itself revolutionary in the early nineteenth century. Daughters of the well-to-do families of France were brought to her, with the hope that they, as future wives and mothers would be educated to values other than those that had destroyed so much, and to bring about social change.

Today, the ways in which education is carried out have changed, they are many and diverse, in order to meet the needs of our present world reality. But the goal and purpose are the same - to lead people to wholeness in the knowledge that they are individually loved by God. May this awareness be for us and for our students a call to bring others to freedom and to a conviction that they are loved and valued in the eyes of God. I would like to end by quoting Mother Jane Erskine Stuart, a Scot who became Superior General of the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1914. She was an educator who was ahead of her time, and her writings still have much to say to us. She wrote, and I would like her to speak to you today:

“ So saints develop sanctity in others, and truth and confidence beget truth and confidence, and the spirit of enterprise calls out the spirit of enterprise, and constancy trains to endurance and perseverance, and wise kindness makes others kind, and courage makes them courageous, and in its degree each good quality tends to reproduce itself in others”.

Jane Maltby rscj
1st March 2004