CLAYSS Participates in the Conference on “Virtuous Leadership and Character” in Oxford

The 12th Annual Conference “Virtuous Leadership and Character”, organized by the Jubilee Centre for Character and virtues of the University of Birmingham, took place at Magdalen College, Oxford University, England, from 4th to 6th January.

The conference brought together a hundred professionals in character education from different parts of the world and included the topic “servant leader,” which is closely related to the service-learning approach.

In this context, Porticus and the Templeton World Charity Foundation convened a session to present the programmes developed by both organizations for leadership training: the diploma developed by the Pontifical Benedict XVI Foundation and the Francisco de Vitoria University (Madrid, Spain) in “Leadership: Service through Virtues”, supported by the Templeton Foundation, and the Uniservitate  programme coordinated by CLAYSS for Porticus. Dr Jörg Schulte-Altedorneburg (Porticus), Dr Fiona Gatty (Templeton World Charity), Prof. Olivia Nuñez (University Francisco de Vitoria) and Prof. María Nieves Tapia, the director of CLAYSS, delivered the presentations.

The introduction of the concept of “quality service-learning” and the scope of the Uniservitate programme aroused great interest among the participants in the session. The conference was an occasion to explore the potential connections between the fields of service-learning and character and leadership education and generate new relationships with universities from various continents.