Fe y Alegría
"A Heart for Peace and Life"
Mission
Fe y Alegría (Faith and Joy) is an 'International Movement of Comprehensive Popular Education and Social Promotion' whose activities are directed to the most impoverished and excluded sectors of the population, in order to empower them in their personal development and their participation in society.
Profile
Fe y Alegría was founded in Venezuela in 1955 as a way to consolidate efforts that were being made to provide educational services in the slum zones of Caracas. We have since expanded to become a global movement whose action seeks to bring people together in an attitude of growth, self-reflection and in search of answers to the challenges of human need.
Fe y Alegría is an ‘International Movement of Integral Popular Education and Social Welfare’:
• It is educational because it promotes the formation of people aware of their potential and reality, free and exemplifying solidarity, open to transcendence and protagonists in their development;• It is popular because it takes education as a pedagogical and political means for transformation for and with communities;
• It is integral because it understands that education involves the whole person;
• And it promotes social welfare through its commitment to overcoming the challenges of human need and injustice.
Our formal education consists of networks of schools emphasizing agricultural, commercial and industrial specialization, as well as other courses geared toward professional training. We also offer formal and informal radio education; radio station networks dedicated to transmitting programs for literacy training, formal elementary and high schooling for adults, and technical training.
Results
Our achievements are measured by the number of students who graduate from our system and continue to university, the number of graduates who enter the labour market and most particularly, the changes that occur in communities as a result of the presence of our schools and the community work realized by teachers, students, parents, and guardians.
To a large degree, our success is in the reach of our organization to the most impoverished members of society. In 2006, the number of students and other participants directly served by Fe y Alegría reached a total of 1,364,077. In many programs, however, it is almost impossible to number the direct participants, much less the indirect ones. We estimate the number of people reached by our movement in the course of a single year to be near seven million.
Check back soon for more detailed results!
