Valencia, November 10, 2021 – The Vicariate of Culture of the Archdiocese of Valencia and the Catholic University of Valencia, with the collaboration of the Ambassadors for Development Foundation publish the Conclusions of the III International Conference «Poverty and Hunger: Education and Technology in the context of the pandemic» held on November 9 and 10.
The director of the conference, José Luis Sánchez Ph.D., communicates the congress conclusions, and asks for the collaboration of all governmental, economic and cultural organisations, and the civil society, to help finish with the globalization of indifference —which contributes to increase poverty— and launches an SOS to search for solutions to alleviate hunger in the world.
“The three international conferences held at the Universidad Católica de Valencia (UCV), are the result of a research work in which more than 70 researchers, thinkers, scientists, economists, theologians, engineers, doctors, and biologists have contributed to analyse this issue and its possible solutions. These conclusions are a reference point for other universities and organizations to join these initiatives so that they find an echo and a response in society”.
Conclusions from the UCV III International Conference Poverty and Hunger: Education and Technology in the Context of the Pandemic
Valencia, November 10, 2021
1. The pandemic has led to higher levels of poverty, but it has also removed the veil that covered the truth, and exposed our vulnerability as a society.
Vaccines have been widely effective against COVID-19. Messenger RNA technology will enable the development of a new generation of drugs and vaccines.
2. Among the lessons learnt from the pandemic there is awareness that not only the physical pain of the sick must be addressed, but also their suffering, which includes other dimensions such as health, social and spiritual assistance. Suffering, which is exclusively human, comes from the fear of being forgotten and abandoned.
3. Confinement had a disruptive effect on school life with profound consequences on the nutritional, psychological and socializing spheres of children’s lives, and had a deeper impact on families with fewer resources.
The closure of schools caused many children to miss the only meal of the day. Malnutrition amplifies the severity of all human diseases and conditions.
4. The globalization of indifference -which has become widespread- is a terrible atrocity that allows the new forms of poverty (child slavery, forced labour, prostitution, organ trafficking and forced migration) to remain a reality.
5. The family is a key factor in children health prevention and promotion, because parents are children’s first doctors. If a public system works against the family -the fundamental cell of society- it attacks health, and this results in poverty.
6. Precision breeding will improve reality by making it possible for that part of humanity suffering from starvation to have food as their first medicine.
Scientists around the world, led by 185 Nobel Laureates, are now supporting the campaign for precision breeding and biofortified foods as a solution to the problem of food production.
7. A developmental gap of one hundred years exists between those who have access to an education system and those who have not. Poverty and famine are greater in those regions where there is no access to school.
Twenty per cent of children in the world are malnourished and unable to grow up in good health. The consequences for learning are dire.
8. Technology must help the wounded Nature, covering it with a higher nature (technology) that will not jeopardize human life. If that were not the case, everything would be compromised. Technological advances in any field have to be implemented under the guidelines of Ethics and Anthropology.
Technology can offer new models of education to support learning and development. The fourth revolution will bring new skills to complement technological advances in the workplace, thus synchronizing education and economics.
9. A new anthropological dimension must be found to protect both mankind and the environment. Regenerative agriculture is showing us a way to reduce the impact of agriculture on the environment and to increase productivity, aligning environmentalism with the profitability that farmers need.
The principle of subsidiarity must underpin the coordination of all disciplines and fields of knowledge that help mankind develop all possible ways of self-fulfilment.
10. If the world was not created, then it was not thought by anyone. This produces a great intellectual anxiety. If the notion of Creation is eliminated, there is no explanation to the questions Why the world? Why is there an originating particle?
We do not have the Creator before us, but we do have the created reality, which is a “radical innovation of reality”. The appearing of a person is entirely inexplicable by the mechanisms of Physics and Biology, since it cannot be reduced to anything, it is unique and unrepeatable.
The Incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ the Lord, gives meaning to the questions of every man who comes to this world and completes and fulfils the religious path of those who seek the Truth.