Helping those most disadvantaged, low-income families, immigrants and refugees in a

situation or at risk of exclusion is the basis on which the Universidad Católica de

Murcia launched, just over a year ago, the Iberoamerican Chair of Development

Cooperation, in collaboration with Mensajeros de la Paz, which has been presented

this week at the headquarters of the Spanish Agency for International

Cooperation for Development, in Madrid.

The event was attended by Pilar Cancela, State Secretary for Development

Cooperation; Father Ángel, President and founder of Mensajeros de la Paz;

Víctor Meseguer, Director of the UCAM International Chair of Social

Responsibility; José Osuna, President of the socio-educational Foundation

Mensajeros de la Paz – these last two, co-directors of the Chair – and Enrique

Palenzuela, UCAM Director of Marketing.

This platform integrates development cooperation initiatives arising from the

public and private spheres and manages sponsorship projects so that any

natural or legal person can participate, based on fundamental principles for

UCAM such as research, teaching, and internalisation. According to the

Spanish State Secretary for International Cooperation, this Chair ‘is a key

instrument upon which the values of international cooperation and human

solidarity are based’.

‘We strongly believe that fighting for a fairer and more egalitarian society

is worthwhile’.

Both institutions are united by ‘their missionary work, in defence of the values of

Christian humanism and the fight against the hereditary chain of poverty’, said

Víctor Meseguer. He listed different initiatives that the Universidad Católica de Murcia

is developing and which now join this project, such as the Master's Degree in

Corporate Social Responsibility, attended by a large number of students from

Latin America, ‘our Trojan horse to change reality for the better’, as he described it.

UCAM provides knowledge in research, training, knowledge transfer and

University Social Responsibility, complementing the work that Mensajeros de

la Paz carries out. ‘We strongly believe that fighting for a fairer and more

egalitarian society is worthwhile’, added the director of the Chair in Social

Responsibility. In the same spirit, Father Ángel emphasised the importance of

‘sharing whatever we have, however much or little it is. In this way, a better

world can certainly be made’. In addition, during his speech he highlighted the

work being done by this university institution presided over by José Luis

Mendoza.

The event was attended by representatives of the embassies in Spain of

Romania, Jordan, Poland, Honduras, Peru, Paraguay, El Salvador,

Indonesia, India, Haiti, and the Strategy for Central America.