Solidarity, Education and Development (Spain) and Australian Marist Solidarity unite.
Last week two members of the Australian Marist Solidarity(AMS) team, Br Allen Sherry (CEO) and Ashley Bulgarelli (Projects and Partnerships co-ordinator), met with the team of the largest Marist NGO in Europe called SED (Solidarity, Education and Development). This meeting was hosted by Brother Javier the CEO of SED at their offices in Madrid. It represents a very significant potential collaboration for AMS as we have already shared resources for the MSA and Spanish Marist schools.
One example of this new collaboration was the agreement that the offices would work together to fund search for Phase 2 of the first Marist school in Moulovibazaar, Bangladesh. With international agencies moving away from formal education funding then the Marist schools in both countries will be significant contributors to this project in 2018. We also expect to collaborate on other new projects in Asia in the future.
This SED-AMS alliance, as it is called in Spanish, represents the first significant development of a new international network of the 23 Marist NGOs for development across all continents. It has the possibility to open up exchange between MSA schools and Marist schools in Spain.
As internationality is a significant element of the original vision of St Marcellin, and arising within the Marist mission at global level, it is promising that AMS is able to support this initiative because of the generosity of our Australian school communities.