Felipe Campos, General Manager of Associació Educativa Itaca, explains about the world of educational leisure.
As it happens with other contributions to society, to talk about educational leisure today often requires to look back to the past in order to understand the rich and complex present-day reality.
Similar to many other cases that appeared during the 20th century, my association evolved under the umbrella of renovating pedagogies and the practice of thousands and thousands of young people in the sphere of religious institutions. Century-old traditions, notably holiday camps, scouts, sociocultural animation, leisure pedagogy or social education, etc.
This is how we became socioeducative and communal realities. Today we are a consequence of the previously explained origins: institutions that are able to meet present-day needs with innovative proposals that abide to our missionary raison d’être.
The A.E. Itaca (Educative Association Itaca) develops socioeducative projects at the service of the community. Their aim is to generate equal opportunities and to assist children, youngsters and families along personal development processes, with special care for those who are socially vulnerable.
The A.E. Itaca strives for guarantee of rights and equal opportunities of all members of the community, with a special sensitivity towards childhood and young people living in our districts and cities.
We want to change things. We want to fight social injustice and eradicate poverty and exclusion of any kind, and to put the situation of our children on the political and social agenda. We want –and we work with our community for that– children, young people and their families to become real protagonists.
I think the social contribution of these organizations can be summarized in these 4 lines of action that guide our educative and social response:
In your opinion, what can other European organizations working with children and young people learn from you?
We can’t give up to keep in touch with other realities, we can’t miss the opportunity to meet them and open ourselves to them, to get to know other realities in Spain and the rest of Europe. I think the secret of educational leisure institutions lies here: it is this ability we have to articulate answers, bondings, bridges through our curiosity, so as to generate social transformation and innovation.