About us?

REIBA

The Amazonian Bilingual Intercultural Education Network is a non-profit ecclesial organization that depends on the Amazonian Ecclesial Conference (CEAMA). REIBA encourages, coordinates and promotes mutual collaboration between educational proposals in regular basic education (initial, primary and secondary) of the Amazon region, especially those that are developed with the original peoples.

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Our mission

Develop a network of intercultural and bilingual indigenous education at the different levels of regular basic education (initial, primary and secondary) of educational centers in the Amazon region, which, in close connection with community education, promotes the comprehensive education of children, girls and adolescents and strengthen their critical and reflective capacity to seek and promote transformations, contributing at the same time to building a Church with an Amazonian identity.

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Objectives

Weave a comprehensive bilingual intercultural indigenous education network with the educational centers of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions of the Amazon region (dioceses, apostolic vicariates and Prelatures) strengthened with community education based on ancestral knowledge and focused on the search for good living, to promote in school education the dialogue of knowledge, demanding from the countries that make up the Pan-Amazon region a pertinent education with identity.

"We have to break with the historical paradigm that considers the Amazon as an inexhaustible pantry of the States without taking into account its inhabitants."

Pope Francisco

Our history

The Church in Latin America began considering the Amazonian region a territory with its own characteristics and features in the Aparecida Document (2007), and because of this proposed “to establish, between the local churches in each South America country which makes up the Amazonian region, a pastoral group that prioritizes the poor and works to serve the common good.

This regional pastoral group of the Amazon was able to work more effectively upon the creation of the Panamazonian Network REPAM in 2014. REPAM began working towards the pastoral coordination of the Church in the Amazon and played an important role in organizing, convening, and realizing the Panamazonian Synod (October 2019).

REIBA is a Catholic educational network for the Amazonian region and draws its inspiration from the Panamazonian Synod and from Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation, “Querida Amazonia,” or “Beloved Amazon.” REIBA was created on July 9, 2020 out of REPAM’s (Panamazonian Eclesiastical Network) Intercultural Education Nucleus—today, REIBA is also associated with the Amazonian Ecclesiastical Conference (CEAMA). REIBA’s principal alliances are CEAMA, REPAM, the CLAR (Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious) and the CRB (Conference of Brazilian Religious).

Currently, REIBA has a presence in at least one vicariate or diocese in 7 of the 9 countries which comprise the Amazonian region: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela. REIBA works together with the bishops, parish priests, religious congregations, and volunteers who wish to serve by accompanying the indigenous communities of the Amazon in working towards an improved education network.

ALIADOS:

Amazonian Ecclesiastic Conference

Pan-amazonian Ecclesiastic Network

Conference of Religious of Latin America and the Caribbean

Conference of Religious of Brazil

Caritas: Latin America and the Caribbean

“The Amazon is an interconnected multinational whole, a large biome shared by nine countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela and French Guiana. However, I address this Exhortation to everyone. On the one hand, I do it to help awaken affection and concern for this land that is also "ours" and invite you to admire it and recognize it as a sacred mystery; on the other hand, because the attention of the Church to the problems of this place forces us to briefly return to some questions that we should not forget and that can inspire other regions of the earth in the face of their own challenges.»

Pope Francisco