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Cuban President awarded King Sejong prize at inauguration of Pedagogy 2007

The Latin American and Caribbean Pedagogical Institute gave the recognition of the UNESCO to Fidel for being the intellectual author of the ‘Me, yes I can’ method

CUBA, January 30, 2007.- For being the intellectual author of the literacy method Yo, sí puedo (Me, yes I can) the community of workers of the Latin American and Caribbean Pedagogical Institute (IPLAC) gave President Fidel Castro, the King Sejong Prize, granted to that entity by UNESCO, during the inauguration of Pedagogy 2007.

The rector of IPLAC, Caesar Torres Batista, gave the award to Luis Ignacio Gómez, Minister of Education, for him to pass on to Fidel; and said it signified the Cuban leader's supportive vocation and his incessant battle to contribute to a better world.

Torres recalled that last June, IPLAC received that Prize for the application and impact of the method. “It makes us the only country whose results have actually materialized in support of other nations,” he said.

Up the moment, he specified, there are twelve versions of Me, yes I can, on whose preparation educators from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Uruguay, Granada and Cuba have participated. Today it is being applied in sixteen countries of Latin America, Africa and Oceania; and thanks to it more than 2,081,129 people have learned how to read and write, with the consultancy of 749 Cuban officials and educators.

Children welcomed the 5,200 educators from 42 countries that are participating in this tenth Congress, which opened last evening in the Karl Marx Theater with dances and songs. It will meet until next Friday in the Havana Conventions Center, with a wide scientific program about the most up to date and quality pedagogical tendencies.

In his special address ‘The Educational Revolution in Cuba’, Luis Ignacio Gómez stated that teachers are united in the commitment with education that is a battle for humanity and its hopes.

“We look at the future with justified optimism and we pray that this Congress makes, from the exchanges, the mutual learning and the respect for diversity, sure roads toward the unity of the educators, a profession that everywhere constitutes towards the preservation of the highest human values that we have the duty of giving continuity to generation after generation,” he said.

At the opening ceremony were Lázara Mercedes López Acea, member of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Party; José Ramón Fernández, vice-president of the Council of Ministers; Juan Vela Valdés, Minister of Higher Education; the Ministers of Education of Venezuela, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Swaziland, and representatives of that ministry from Ghana, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Mozambique, Namibia and Panama. (Cubaminrex-Juventud Rebelde)

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