Higher Education for the Excluded

The conveners of ten working groups of the International Association of Jesuit Universities (IAJU) met for the first time in Rome from December 15 to 16 with the aim of fostering collaboration and aligning efforts towards a common vision: Jesuit universities as agents of social transformation in a world that desperately needs it.

This past August, the Jesuit commitment to the Universal Apostolic Preferences came to life through an inspiring global initiative connecting two continents. The Xavier Institute of Engineering (XIE) in Mumbai, India, and the Xavier Jesuit Institute (XJI) in Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria, joined forces once again to deliver Joy of Python—a program designed to expand educational opportunity and help close the digital divide in the Nigerian cities of Benin City and Lagos.

This six-month short-cycle tertiary programme, accredited (in Spanish) by the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali, is designed to address the needs of communities all over the world to promote responsible tourism that allows the generation of income, while preserving the community’s fragile resources.

Loyola University hosted a working session at its Seville campus with rectors and senior leaders from the institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in Africa and Madagascar (AJCU-AM). These sessions built on prior meetings held throughout 2024 in the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo, Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, which gradually shaped a group of institutions aroundan initial proposal of collaboration. The program provided a space to exchange ideas about the structure of the group,identify priority areas for collaboration, and explore funding opportunities for joint international projects.

On the 31st of July 2023, the North-West Africa Province (ANW) of the Society of Jesus signed an MoU with the Jesuit Worldwide Learning (JWL) for higher education at the margins.