What is Uniservitate

UNISERVITATE is the programme for the promotion of service-learning (SL) in Catholic Higher Educaton.

Its objective is to generate a systemic change in Catholic Higher Education Institutions (CHEIs) through the institutionalization of SL as a tool to achieve its mission of offering an integral education to the new generations and involving them in an active commitment to the problems of our time.

The most recent Vatican documents on the mission and identity of the CHEIs call for the articulation of science and faith, academic excellence and community service, knowledge production and Christian witness in society, of a socially committed university.

In recent years, Pope Francis has strongly emphasized the need for the Church to “go out to the peripheries” and has called on educational institutions to offer their students the opportunity to involve “heads, hands and hearts” in addressing the challenges and problems presented by contemporary societies.

Focusing on the transformation of teaching practices in CHEIs, service-learning proposes to articulate academic activities with social commitment, thus strengthening the spiritual identity of Catholic institutions. It is fundamentally a matter of involving young people as real agents of social change in the construction of a more just and supportive society that expresses the mandate of the “civilization of love”.

UNISERVITATE is a global network and as such, it seeks to establish solid and constructive links between higher education institutions rooted in very diverse social and cultural contexts, with the purpose of expanding dialogue and enriching the perspective of higher education in the acknowledgement of the multiculturalism that characterizes the contemporary scenario. Collaboration, open listening, respect for diversity and collective production constitute the bases on which the programme is built and grows day by day.