UNESCO Recognizes Father Leonel Narvaez, IMC
Leonel Narvaez, IMC
The efforts to build a new Colombia are being recognized: the Foundation for Reconciliation was awarded the Emprender Paz 2011 Prize. The project for “schools of forgiveness and reconciliation,” which is operated jointly with the Nestlé Company, was chosen from among 200 entries. The prize is awarded only for projects for peace financed by companies which operate in Colombia.
The Foundation for Reconciliation has its head office in the provincial house of the Consolata Missionaries in Bogotá.
The School of Forgiveness
After more than 60 years of civil unrest and violence, a new breeze of peace began to blow throughout Colombia in 2006 thanks to the intuition and hard work of Father Leonel Narvaez – a
native Colombian, a Consolata missionary, and the founder of the Foundation for Reconciliation.
Through véritable “experimental” schools of forgiveness, people afflicted with a painful past are
taught to look at others and the world in a new way. With deep-rooted respect for human dignity, Father Narvaez decided to create the Foundation for Reconciliation, to bring people and institutions to open themselves to the pedagogy of forgiveness and reconciliation through useful and incisive propositions that go beyond the irreversibility of resentment and the desire for revenge. This new way of looking at life creates new narratives and new accounts which put the focus on victims and the most vulnérable people, thus ensuring that with the truth there will be a return.
