Community Building
Esade’s Community Building initiative is transversal in nature and targeted at all members of our community. Its primary objective is to create a sense of belonging and emphasise two of our identity’s key traits: sensitivity and human quality and social commitment. To this end, we organise different activities, such as solidarity activities and the First Year Experience, based on ideas proposed by a multidisciplinary team comprising members from different organisational units.
Esade, a solidarity-minded community
Through Esade’s social action initiatives, we aim to contribute to the development of a fairer and more solidarity-minded society and to have a positive impact. We promote volunteering projects that encourage our community members to freely and voluntarily work with not-for-profit projects and organisations. We organise more than 40 initiatives every year in different areas in collaboration with numerous social entities.
Projects and commitments
Corporate volunteerism
- Participation in the Èxit Foundation Coach Program, which works to guide and motivate young people in vulnerable situations so that they can continue with their training and find a professional project for the future.
- Volunteering to take part and support Fundació Amics de la Gent Gran, an organisation working to help seniors who may be feeling isolated and lonely. During the confinement, this help included talking to seniors regularly over the phone. Many of our volunteers still work with this organisation.
If you’d like to participate, please write to: identityandmission@esade.edu
Solidarity-based initiatives
Each academic year, Esade offers more than 40 solidarity-based initiatives promoted by employees and students who want to raise the community’s awareness about different social issues and involve them in initiatives and actions of varying scope.
These initiatives encompass different issues, for example, assisting vulnerable groups of people (food and clothing drives and a solidarity walk with Sant Joan de Déu), promoting medical research (La Marató de TV3 and #EsadeGoesPInk) and supporting educational opportunities for at-risk children and teens (Casal dels Infants and Fundació Èxit).
If you’d like to tell us about other solidarity-based initiatives organised by members of our community, send us an e-mail: identityandmission@esade.edu.
Individual volunteering
At Esade, we support people who want to volunteer individually and help some of the institutions with which we have close ties. We build bridges between the Esade community and these organisations so that every volunteer can find the project and activity in which they can feel truly useful.
If you’d like to be an individual volunteer, contact us by e-mail: identityandmission@esade.edu.
International initiatives
Collaboration with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS)
Esade collaborates with the JRS, an international organisation present in more than 56 countries. JRS works with people in war zones and in refugee camps. Its mission: accompany, serve and advocate on behalf of refugees and other individuals displaced by war.
We provide visibility to the JRS by participating in programmes and different initiatives with students, such as Innovation Quest and the CEMS programme consulting project.
On World Refugee Day, we also organise activities to raise awareness and inform the Esade community about the situation of refugees around the world.
Collaboration with Central American universities
Since 2003, Esade has maintained cooperative agreements with the three Jesuit universities in Central America. Once a year, Esade faculty visit one of these institutions to share and discuss their experience with educational innovation challenges and foment the development of local faculty and thus provide a better learning experience for local students.
Universidad Centroamericana UCA · Nicaragua
Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas · El Salvador
Universidad Rafael Landivar · Guatemala
First Year Experience:
A Holistic Education
Esade created the First-Year Experience project to welcome students to the community during their first year and facilitate their integration through a series of extracurricular activities designed to help them to interact with other students. This programme, based on the cura personalis principle, is fundamental for students’ academic success and their integration within the university. It helps students to build bonds and provide each other mutual emotional support, contributing as well to their personal growth so that they can become socially responsible professionals.
First -Year Experience activities
For additional information, write to: identityandmission@esade.edu (Current students can access our ECampus directly).
Individual conversations
Exchange of experiences with the Identity and Mission team
Off campus day tripps
Outings that allow you to know the territory and its culture
Overnight mindfulness retreats
Intercultural encounters and practice of meditative activities
Group conversations
Group meetings with experts on topics of interest to students
Yoga and meditation courses
Face-to-face or online activity that takes place throughout the course
The ignatian way
Experiential tour of the route that changed life to San Ignacio de Loyola
A space to be heard: Cultivating our inner lives
Inspired by the tradition of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesus’ founder, we provide everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, with emotional and spiritual support, all the while ensuring the utmost confidentiality. The aim is for individuals to share and talk about their life events and personal experiences and further explore their spiritual lives.
This personal guidance is an experience designed to foster personal growth and maturity based on dialogue and active listening. It can help people to objectify what they’re experiencing to thus be able to capture and decipher their future focuses, concerns, emotions, anguish and uncertainties.
Through this guidance, people learn to discover for themselves which road they should take, as well as how to make decisions to face their own lives and achieve increasingly profound knowledge of themselves. At the same time, they can share their dreams, struggles, successes and fears and benefit from a more profound and wiser source of freedom and joy.