Protecting nature and promoting social justice, the keys to fighting inequality
This is one of the main ideas presented this morning at the XXIII International Charity and Volunteering Conference of the UCAM, being held at the Los Jerónimos Campus.
‘We wish to promote the development of communities and hope, in line with this edition's theme, given the turbulent times we are living in, with wars and corruption in certain areas’ said Antonio Alcaraz, UCAM Vice-Rector of University Outreach and Director of the XXIII International Charity and Volunteering Conference. Held today at the Los Jerónimos Campus, the theme of the conference is Hope and care for creation: towards the 2025 Jubilee in Rome.
Launched last Thursday with the inauguration of the International Volunteering Exhibition in Murcia, where more than 100 associations took part, the conference continues today and tomorrow at UCAM with a series of round table discussions with experts in cooperation and social development.
One of the debates focused on the African continent, with the participation of William Kikanae, Chief of the Massai Tribe of Kenya, and Rosa Escandell, President of the Asociación de Desarrollo, Comercio Alternativo y Microcrédito (Association for Development, Alternative Trade and Microcredit), an NGO that cooperates in Kenya, who stressed ‘the importance of investing in education and employment development to end the inequalities that are especially accentuated in some parts of the African continent’. Kikanae, who expressed his joy at once again taking part in this conference, thanked UCAM for its support for his tribe, for its contribution to the setting up of a training classroom where Kenyan children are already being trained.
The second panel discussion featured the voices of health and emergency rescue volunteers. Cindia Morales, Head of the Medical Unit of Bomberos Unidos Sin Fronteras (Firefighters Together Without Borders), explained that their work consists mainly of ‘strengthening the emergency corps in countries vulnerable to major disasters, focusing on the work of the rescue teams and the health workers who accompany them’. Manuel Luque, President of the NGO Worldproject, underlined the need to take care of nature, ‘which is directly related to the health of all of us’.