(ANS – Bogota) – The St Louis Bertrand Province of Medellín, Colombia (COM), together with the Provincial Commission for Education, led by Br. José Luis Jiménez, SDB, took an active part in the 2nd Educomunication Congress held from September 12 to 13 in Bogota. This meeting brought together all the Salesian Provinces of Colombia around a key theme for current educational events: the articulation between education and communication.
During the congress, a valuable opportunity for reflection on the role that communication plays in educational processes was offered. It was recognized that in the classroom, interaction between students and teachers not only imparts knowledge but also strengthens skills that are essential for life, especially in a generation that has grown up in a digital environment.
Salesian pedagogy and pastoral care also promote a critical and aware view of reality, which invites the formation of responsible citizens, capable of impacting society through faith and social commitment.
Similarly, the importance of understanding that every educational community is, in essence, a communicative community was emphasized: each person, from his or her role, contributes to the construction of bonds, the circulation of values, and institutional positioning. Communicating, in this sense, does not only mean transmitting messages, but also building identities and transforming environments.
The COB Province, in particular, played a leading role in work table 5: “Strategic management of communication,” where the knowledge acquired on strategic communication planning at the provincial level was shared and the Popayán communication nursery was presented as a successful case of youthful active involvement, Salesian pedagogy, and creative use of communication tools. This experience demonstrated that, in Salesian terms, “communication means connecting souls.”
The event also opened up opportunities to explore education through communication, addressing topics such as technological mediation, communicative expression through art, authenticity in the work of teaching and strategic management of communication, together with the presentation of real cases of research and implementation in the classroom. All these elements fed into a broad reflection on how to achieve transcendent communication that can have an integral impact on society.