Our Sacred Heart School is situated in the city of Paso Carrasco, in the district of Canelones, in the outskirts of the city of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.
It has an enrolment of 240 children, As of this year it has 240 children on its register, offering primary education only, from the lowest level (aged 3) to the 6th grade of primary education (12 years old).
The School is part of the Commission of Formal Education of the Argentina-Uruguay Province of the Society of the Sacred Heart, and belongs to the Latin-American network of Formal Education of the Religious of the Sacred Heart and to the Uruguyan Association of Catholic Education.
It is the only centre for Catholic education in the region, and this year it is completing 50 years of service to the community of Paso Carrasco.
The present and future beneficiaries of our educational plan are the families of the neighbourhood, who come from the poorer and more vulnerable sectors of our society; their only source of income is their work, yet they commit themselves to invest in education, making the effort to provide a better future for their children.
Women employed as cleaners, construction workers, workers in factories and small businesses in the neighbourhood make an enormous effort financially to maintain something that has great value for them: being able to leave their children in safe surroundings, where clear Christian values are practised and the children receive personal attention. The school is considered an asset and also a solution to daily problems: where there are two parents, there is the strain of a long working day for both. But a large number of children from our school come from one-parent homes, where the woman is the only one responsible for the home, providing for her children and for their education.
This is a year of celebration; we renew our commitments and hopes with the community to which we belong. The whole year has been one of celebration; through many and varied activities, we have found new meaning in the school history. But what has touched us most deeply and brought us together in this most significant year, is our project to extend our education to the First Cycle of Secondary School (13, 14 and 15-year–olds); it is at last becoming a reality. In accordance with our slogan for the year, “We celebrate life, we keep on growing”, our whole educational community has been contributing in various ways to make this dream come true.
As an educational community, we feel we possess our own characteristic spirit and form of work. Besides, the families themselves have requested this explicitly and forcefully on many occasions. They want their children to continue to benefit from what the School has given them in the first stages of their lives.
As a school we wish to continue providing our students with an education for the whole person, inspired by the Gospel and spreading it, accompanying the adolescents and young people of our community, and to go on building their life-project. From this point of view we claim to provide a secondary education with a pastoral element, made possible by extracurricular activities and relying on a united and qualified team; no other school in the region can offer spiritual accompaniment and a life-project.
*** Information and photos sent by Verónica Varela, a member of the Management Committee of Sacred Heart School