Something more than Experience

Abstract

Explaining theories or “delivering homilies” does not lead young people to transform their attitudes and behaviors. That’s why educators tend to offer them transforming experiences, but forgetting oftentimes their evaluation. This paper exposes a solidarity experience for University students in Latin America, with a special focus on the stage of evaluation. The sequence follows the stages of Ignatian pedagogy: experience, reflection, action and evaluation — all of them framed in a context. Specifically, such stages are considered from the idea of slogan (consigna) (Carlos Cabarrús, SJ). This concept gave structure to a retreat held after the experience of Solidarity Internship of ESADE students in summer 2019. This article introduces the idea of consigna, exposes the process of ESADE Solidarity Internships and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the application of this idea to the retreat held on October 2019.