Abstract:

Everything is strongly connected, we are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental (Francis, 2015).

The encyclical Laudato Si' by Pope Francis proposes the analysis of environmental problems without separating them from the analysis of human, family, professional and urban contexts; it is a call to conversion and action for the care of our “common home”.

As a member of the Inter-American Chair Laudato Si', the Universidad Panamericana assumed the commitment to socialize and discuss the Encyclical within its campus community, in order to analyze and extract the fundamental principles that should be incorporated in its three substantive functions.

Socializing an encyclical letter through an active, interactive, and innovative experience that encourages the commitment of the campus community towards ecological conversion was the objective with which we designed the Workshop Laudato Si’. It was structured in four sections, each leading the participants to envision the "common home", understand the call to its care, propose and develop paths towards "ecological conversion", and assume the commitment of caring for the "common home".

161 representatives from 26 schools and departments voluntarily participated. The experience was well received throughout its four stages. They evaluated the workshop both in quantitative and qualitative aspects, and stated that working with the contents of the encyclical letter through an active learning and multidisciplinary experience helped them visualize the Pope’s call to action in a more creative, practical and integral perspective.

Another element that outstands in the workshop’s methodology is the interaction between representatives of all sectors of the campus community to generate proposals. This allowed the development of soft skills such as design, systemic, creative and collaborative thinking, problem solving and teamwork. In addition, the workshop’s experience led to the creation of a sense of community and the assumption of several commitments seeking planetary sustainability.

This paper describes our experience developing an innovative education methodology for the socialization of sustainability issues with the aim of sharing good practices and making them replicable in various educational contexts at different levels.

Keywords:

Environmental awareness, ecological conversion, learning by design, community learning.