Everywhere: Faustino Villanueva Centre
Sunday December 29, 2024

The Centre for Youth Promotion and Rural Development ‘Faustino Villanueva’ was founded by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1984 and is located 355 kilometres north of the capital city of Guatemala, in the municipality of Chahal, Alta Verapaz, with a travel time of six hours. The departmental capital is the city of Cobán, at a distance of 175 kilometres, with an average journey time of four hours. It is a population belonging to the Q’eqchi’ culture, whose economic subsistence is based on agriculture (maize-beans-chilli-cattle-livestock), and in other cases, work outside the municipality. Faustino Villanueva is named after the martyrdom of Fr. Faustino Villanueva, MSC, murdered in the parish of Joyabaj in the department of Quiché, Guatemala. Four years after the martyrdom of Fr. Faustino, the Centre arose as a response to the needs of this population suffering from the need for the bread of knowledge.
Since its beginnings, the Villanueva Centre has offered a boarding school, a place to stay for young people from faraway places who, due to distance or poverty, do not have the means or resources to return to their homes. Within the Centre is the San Agustín Technical Vocational Institute, with basic and diversified education, which are the studies required to continue university studies. Also, the Centre facilitates various occupational workshops to become entrepreneurs and learn a trade. The motto of the Centre is ‘open doors to education’. The teaching pedagogy is ‘learning by building’.
All these activities make it a comprehensive training, allowing young people to respond to professional skills when pursuing higher education or finding a job. As a result of this work, after forty years of serving in this Educational Centre, the municipality currently has more than 80% of professionals who are graduates of this educational establishment and many people who have benefited from scholarships, workshop training, etc.
Due to its geographical position, the Faustino Villanueva Centre continues to be a current response and an oasis of opportunity, as it is the only establishment with a boarding school in the municipality and neighbouring municipalities; on the other hand, the Centre continues to prioritise the least favoured sector of people in poverty or extreme poverty and, finally, it is a Centre that continues to promote means to eradicate hunger and care for the environment. The major concern of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the Faustino Villanueva Centre is to continue to respond to the evils of our time, as Fr. Chevalier points out, and that through this service the heart of Christ continues to be loved everywhere.
Jairo Sevilla, MSC