Providencia – educating for life

URUGUAY, Matías Cerviño •

The Providencia Educational Center is located in the Cerro Oeste (Montevideo, Uruguay); it emerged in 1994. Members of the Schoenstatt Movement and neighborhood people founded it with the objective of accompanying the area’s children and youths in their development as free persons, helping them to discover their potential, and accompanying them in the midst of their own unique development. During the past years, in Providencia, the Blessed Mother carried out the missionary charism and the Schoenstatt pedagogy in a special and original way that seeks to depict Uruguay as looking at education, of forming attachments, and working on spirituality.

Currently the Providencia Educational Center cares for 350 children and youths, through three educational programs: a children’s club, a youth center and the preparatory high school. The children’s club serves 113 school age children and 40 teens between ages 14-18 that attend the youth center. Both programs complement the formal education the children and youths receive daily, and provide pedagogical support where they work to develop the learning processes. They also have optional workshops where the students develop their creativity, among them: catechesis, art, music, digital lab, sports, English, gardening, journalism, karate, skating and cooking.

In 2014, Providencia Lyceum opened a free, secondary center with an extended schedule, where students receive secondary curriculum assignments and optional workshops that develop their abilities stemming from their interests and motivations.

Providencia Lyceum emerged with an understanding that the existing Uruguayan secondary teaching situation has important challenges and it calls upon the entire culture to offer answers for improving educational quality, especially in the areas of greater economic and social vulnerability. In 2016, Providencia Lyceum welcomed a third generation, thereby, completing the basic cycle, which required designing a new program whose objective was to continue accompanying these youths once they graduated from Providencia Lyceum and began their secondary studies; in 2017, a continuity plan was born to assist with this.

MISSION

To assist children and teens in their development as free persons and in their abilities in order to discover his/her potential; offering better educational opportunities for life through a familial and comprehensive approach in a warm affective space.

“I do not want simply to be a signpost on the road. No! Let us go with each another. How wrong it would be to be just a signpost on the way! We are next to each other to kindle each other. This is the eternal dwelling of one in the other of love!” Fr. Joseph Kentenich

VISION

To be an educational community that welcomes, awakens and gives life in which hearts are enkindled mutually in love.

“To educate is to be receiving, awakening and giving life.” Fr. Joseph Kentenich

QUALITY

For Providencia, quality is to be a team working with families committed to a shared pedagogical proposal and coherent to the Center’s values, having the firm conviction in the transforming power of the educational encounter.

“Educating is the impact of one life on another.” Fr. Joseph Kentenich

 

DEVELOPMENT AND PROJECTION TOWARD THE FUTURE

Just as it has been throughout Providencia’s history, children, teens, and their families’ lives challenge us to go meet them where they are and encounter them, thus launching new horizons and projects. It is the exercise of placing a hand on the pulse of our times and an ear on God’s heart that speaks to us through their lives and concerns.

The first generation of Providencia Lyceum graduated in 2016, presenting the challenge of accompanying these young people in this new stage, working to ensure their continuing education. For this reason starting in 2107, the continuing plan is being implemented. This new program contains a double objective: accompanying these youths in the course of the second cycle of secondary education, while they study in high school, and also offering a training program for entering the work world..

Furthermore, in 2017, we proposed to open a center for early childhood and the family; in Uruguay the program is known as CAIF. The purpose is to begin working with children ages 0-4 and their families, assisting them in the first years of life, understanding that this time is fundamental in the child’s development at the cognitive and social level and in forming attachments.

Contact, volunteer, and donations:

Write to Laura Voituret at: lauravoituret@providencia.org.uy

Official website: www.providencia.org.uy

twitter: @CEdProvidencia

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/centro.providencia

Address: Cont. Estados Unidos 2472/2497 esq. Camino Cibils, Montevideo, Uruguay

To make a donation:

In dollars, bank account at Banco Itau (Uruguay): 2501809

Pay to the order of: Asociación Civil Providencia

Swift/BIC: ITAUUYMM

Account number: 026009593

In Euros, bank account at the Banco Itau (Uruguay): 8118433

Pay to the order of: Asociación Civil Providencia

Swift/BIC: ITAUUYMM

 

Original: Spanish, 01/27/2017. Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA. Edited: Melissa Peña-Janknegt, Elgin, TX USA