The Company of Mary is the fruit of a Mission Project, with over four hundred years of history and a universal vocation. It arrived in Spain from France in 1650 with the foundation of the first school in Barcelona. There, very soon, the nuns were recognized for their educational work and their uniqueness, a female religious Order devoted to the education of women. This gave them the nickname of “La Enseñanza” that accompanied them in the many other foundations that they created and which remain.

Today, in the XXI century, our Order has more than twenty schools scattered around different parts of Spain. Nuns and lay people, working together, are the inheritors of our Foundress, Jeanne de Lestonnac; bearers of her legacy which we present in each place contributing our ethos and we are always open to diversity in the plurality of each context.

We provide a Christian humanist education; an integral education that conveys values that endow our students with the ability to study the world with curiosity and openness, also a critical awareness, a capacity for dialogue and sensitivity. This allows them to give active, committed, supportive and creative responses. We want them to become transforming agents in the world in which they live: “To educate in life and for life”.

Since our origins, we have been an educational reference regarding our ability to open Educational Centres to pedagogical novelty. The influence of Michel de Montaigne embodied in principles such as “Formation of well-balanced minds not full heads” has led us to constant research, innovation and to being a pedagogical vanguard. Our teams of educators are constantly embracing the new educational trends.

We want our students to enjoy learning to be motivated and responsible for their own learning beyond the classroom. We work for an "Education which accompanies, integrates and fosters growth" and therefore in all our schools we have incorporated various projects that respond to our singular, upgraded, educational model: Multilingualism, as an enhancer of linguistic competence and communication as a means of building bridges; "Cooperative Learning", in which students are able to lead their own learning and reinforce interpersonal relationships; ‘ICTs / Knowledge and Learning Technologies’, essential for the development of their digital competence and openness to knowledge; “Education for Interiority”, as a means of enabling intrapersonal knowledge and transcendence; "Education for Development" as a way to see reality with a social and environmental vision.

We are the Company of Mary and our reason for being, our Mission Statement, is education. An education that tries to respond to each person’s needs and potentialities. That is why our Centres are open and inclusive, working to create synergies and strengthen the ties of the entire Education Community, especially with families: “To Educate in Community with a Common Project”.

As with St Jeanne de Lestonnac our foundress, Mary of Nazareth is our paradigm, the utopia that helps us move forward in the educational task and strive to be a valid reference in the global, diverse and pluralistic present world.

 

Yours faithfully 

Mª R. Mariña Rios, odn

Provincial Superior