CLAYSS-Uniservitate present at the IAJU Assembly
The Latin American Center for Service-Learning (CLAYSS) participated in the International Association of Jesuit Universities (IAJU) Assembly 2025, held in Colombia during the first week of July. At this important international meeting, CLAYSS was one of the invited entities —and notably, the only one not strictly university-based. Its executive director, Enrique Ochoa, represented CLAYSS, alongside Andrés Peregalli, the vice-coordinator general of the global network, Uniservitate.
Bogotá’s Manzana Jesuítica, its emblematic Church of San Ignacio and the campus of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana welcomed representatives from 180 Jesuit universities worldwide. Focusing on individual and collective responsibility, the meeting addressed global challenges related to the roles of education, migration, sustainability, artificial intelligence, mental health and secularization.
At the assembly, Luis Fernando Múnera Congote SJ, Rector of the host institution, the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, stated: “We live in a time that demands global and local collaboration in every sense and dimension.” In his speech, he also affirmed: “We recognize that the world’s most urgent challenges cannot be resolved in isolation or within disciplinary silos. International collaboration and strong, meaningful networks must therefore be central to our work and our pursuits.” The General of the Society of Jesus, Father Arturo Sosa SJ, had previously urged universities to become “witnesses of hope, creative presences and spaces to dialogue.”
Andrés Peregalli, vice-coordinator of the Uniservitate network and Enrique Ochoa, executive director of CLAYSS,
together with Fr Arturo Sosa SJ, General of the Society of Jesus.
As planned, the event sparked encounters and conversations in an atmosphere of hope for a common future and optimism about the possibilities of fulfilling each entity’s mission through collaboration. “It was a very fraternal event, celebrating hospitality and depth, visualizing challenges for Higher Education, strategies and hope, where the exchange activities were very well integrated with prayers and celebrations,” said Andrés Peregalli. He added that, during the lectures and discussions, “the word solidarity was mentioned recurrently, and, in an incipient way, the service-learning approach.” He recalled that authorities, students, and researchers associated service-learning with the construction of democracy, as well as projects with migrants and the strategic lines of the Network of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in Asia Pacific (AJCU-AP).
During the Assembly, CLAYSS representatives strengthened the connections with Jesuit authorities and key figures from the Society of Jesus networks around the world (AUSJAL, KIRCHER, UNIJES and JWL), alongside the universities of the Order that are already part of the Uniservitate global network.
The already existing alliance between Uniservitate and the Society of Jesus was presented to the audience in a poster displayed in a dedicated space. CLAYSS’s participation in the IAJU Assembly 2025 reaffirms the importance of collaborative work between scholars and civil society organizations to promote engaged education with community transformation.
