Enrique García, president of the Foundation, tells us about the genesis of the Chiara Lubich School, which was inaugurated in March
published in Clarin.com
In March this year, the Charis Argentina Foundation inaugurated a privately run public primary school in the municipality of José C. Paz. The foundation also continues to manage the 'Padre Pedro Leonardi' kindergarten, which it has been running since 2019.
Enrique García, president of the Foundation, tells us about a dream that has now become a reality.
"Listening to the brand new 'Anthem' of the Chiara Lubich School (composed by Eugenio Perpetua), I remember the experience of the last few months leading up to the inauguration of the school inspired by the ideal of unity", says Enrique.
What are your feelings about and during the opening of a school at the Mariapolis Centre?
The beginning was not easy. A lot of work. We started with the formalities, everything was going well, but suddenly there came obstacles, absurd demands from the authorities, a change of interlocutors. They stopped answering the phone. We had to go round to different offices. We are still struggling with bureaucracy, some are faster, and others take time. It does not depend on us. Looking at it with spiritual eyes I would say it is faith
We started the work knowing that we were entering a one-way street. The path of prophecy does not look backwards but forwards. That is where the helping hands appeared. Friends, relatives, aunts donated the money needed to start the work. We went ahead with the selection of teachers, started with parents' meetings and there were more who believed in the project. It was only on 13 December that we were given permission to open registration, and 13 December is not the best time of year for that. We feared that the children had already enrolled in other schools. But the first eighty families, those who believed in the project, got registered. We had a deadline of 4 February to present the end of the project. And so we did.
The majority of our students, 85 per cent, come from state schools. Some, unfortunately, have not been able to sustain their schooling in times of the pandemic, which challenges us even more. Extraordinary efforts are needed today, no matter whether it is the state or the private sector that takes the initiative, the good of the community is at stake. A new rationality is needed to help us understand what needs to be done so that citizens can freely decide how the different categories of goods they require should be offered. We cannot build an education system based on competition between the state and the private sector; we must build a new logic that is based on cooperation. First it is the community that solves things on its own, and the state contributes subsidiarily when the community is unable to meet its needs. Many families are making a great effort to send their children to our school, their school, which is affordable but requires an additional sacrifice.
The great miracle is that we started in the middle of the pandemic, with few resources, in the summer, but with great enthusiasm.
When we started the community meetings, we were asked what capital the Foundation had to tackle the project. At that moment, I answered with the same logic as those who were asking and, without thinking, I told them: none. Today, with hindsight, I can say that the capital we had was immeasurable. It is the capital of the community and we feel very close to the hidden partner. Many people are close to us.
How do you plan to turn the ideal of unity into a curriculum?
The first thing we intend to do is to change the meaning of school work. In school, content is usually at the centre of classroom work and it is good that it has a privileged place, but in order to transform content into knowledge we must move away from it (not ignore it) and put the person of the pupil at the centre. Content, when it enters into dialogue with the environment and the community, becomes knowledge.
It sounds simple, but it is complex. It requires teachers who not only know the different disciplines, but also have the vocation to put themselves in the other's shoes. That is why we thought the best place to look for our teachers was in the community itself; that way we made sure we had some knowledge of the neighbourhood and its needs.
Another expectation concerns management. Inspired by the ideal of unity, the Chiara Lubich School cannot but be an enterprise of an economy of communion. With this in mind, we propose to manage all processes, from student admission to staff recruitment, conflict management, resource management, and stakeholder relations policy. The first challenge will be when we start to account for the management of funds. We are committed to transparency.
You had started with a kindergarten, this year you launched a primary school, what is the next step?
In 2022 we start with primary school, from grade one to grade four. In 2023 we will complete the primary school and if everything goes well, i.e. the adaptation of the building, in 2024 we will open the afternoon shift in the kindergarten so that we can also start with the second section per year of the primary school. Then we will consider continuing with the secondary school. We aspire to make it a technical school. We are working on that. We know that the municipality is thinking of a technical university, so it will be necessary to activate the technical module in the secondary school so that the university has a critical mass. It is also crucial for us to open up and work with the different sectors of the community.
How does the preferential option for the poor manifest itself?
If a group of entrepreneurs wanted to help reduce poverty, there is no doubt that they would start by investing in education. In this sense we feel privileged. Not everyone can start with a school, and believe me, it is wonderful.
It seems to me that the key is not to work for the poor, but with them. The ‘for’ assumes that some are better than others or that they do not need anything while others do. The ‘with’ assumes that we all need each other. It is the way of the trinity. We and mutual love. No one is so poor that they cannot give or so rich that they cannot receive, said the saint of Assisi.
Another challenge is to build the network: the community is the centre. And when there is a community, and you do not feel powerless, the community itself puts you at the centre and you no longer feel alone. One of the children starting in the first year lives with many hardships. The mother and grandmother are struggling every day to survive and the father is absent, so no one takes care of the child. I cannot describe this child’s happiness when we welcomed him at school. On the day we prepared the classrooms for the start before the inauguration, he was cleaning the windows of his classroom together with the adults, and he was also helping to move chairs and desks. He did not feel an outsider to the community, but a part of it, and this is the option we are building together. When Chiara invited the poor to her table, she did not hide them in the courtyard at the back, but sat them next to herself.
When we started meeting, we did not know much about each other, except for a few things. We came from different backgrounds. But now, looking back, I see that we came together as we should. When we started, 
we didn't know that we would have to renovate a building, but hey, we have architects; we didn't know that we would found a school, but now we have teachers and school principals; we didn't know that we would also be inspired by the ideal of unity, but now we have the focolares. I really appreciate the contribution of Anabella, Bettina, José Luis, Paulo and Santiago, we are a great team.
Unity is not uniformity, but integration, putting the needs of others in our hearts. We want to do something revolutionary in the way we run these projects. And this revolution leads us to feel the unjust inequalities of the world as our own. I don't know if we will succeed. It is difficult, but at the end of our discussions we feel better. When we dealt with the selection of teachers for the school, everyone evaluated different things about the candidates and the exchange of opinions was very enriching, until, with everyone's input, we arrived at what we considered the best solution. Now it will have to be seen whether this will come through in the daily life of the school. It is a laborious process, perfectible, but edifying.
There is one thing I really appreciate about the team. There is always someone - more than one - who takes the baton and pulls the cart. This makes us feel that there is no one who knows more or is better than the other, everyone contributes to the common good in their own way.
