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About DENA Social Justice & Advocacy

Our Mission To joyfully announce the radical Good News that God loves us all and calls us to cooperate in the building of God’s Kingdom. To assist the Lasallian family to learn and practice Catholic social teaching as a catalyst for advocacy and systematic change.

Lasallians, by tradition, have gone beyond the borders.

This creative impulse comes from our foundation, when John Baptist de La Salle, going beyond social and religious borders of his time, brought together a heterogeneous group of lay teachers that, in the spirit of partnership was first transformed into a community, then into society, and finally into an Institute. (LR3)

We Brothers and Lasallians are challenged to be truly convinced that the educational service of the poor is a constitutive part of our Lasallian identity, vocation and mission.

The commitment to the transformation of our educational works as instruments of education for the poor, the defense of the rights of children and education for social justice still greatly concerns us. (cf. Area of emphasis 5.1 of the IA 2006)(pg 31)

We dream that the renewal of our existing educational works be done not only with the criteria of success and social prestige, but with the idea of fidelity to our vocation and our identity as ambassadors of Jesus Christ announcing the Gospel to the poor.

Together with our Lasallian partners, we dream of continuing to work for the education of the poor, the defense of the rights of children, and education for justice.

We dream of the renewal of our existing educational works so that they become islands of creativity and agents of social transformation.

We recognize that in the Lasallian network our educational responses to the needs and necessary economic resources are unequal. We are challenged to find effective strategies of solidarity for equity and educational equality.3.2 Horizons 3.2.1 In a globalized world that accentuates injustice, we dream of being a prophetic sign to bring fraternal and equitable relationships among the different parts of the Lasallian network. 3.2.2

We dream of a Lasallian network that can offer a service of integral education of the person to all. A great challenge for the Institute is the concern for the rights of children to receive an education, offering accessible and economically supported educational responses to all and supporting them economically. For this we need to find our own economic resources and to seek public and private assistance.

We dream of Lasallians who continue to take part in building a more just and sharing world. They support and participate in programs, movements, structures, and educational initiatives that respond effectively to all forms of poverty, new and old.

Today, the Institute is called to be involved, together with the entire Church, in a new stage of evangelization marked by the joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium)

We will . . . 

  1. Allow ourselves to be challenged by Pope Francis, “to be open to the dynamic force of the Holy Spirit.”

  2. Prayerfully consider the Founder’s invitation “to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society” (EG 187).

  3. Commit ourselves to promote the Rights of the Child and to advocate on behalf of peace, justice and liberation inspired by the mission of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.