300 participants attended the congress titled "Good citizens and the Preventive System" in the university's "Sur" Campus in Quito this morning to listen to speakers form Europe and Latin America talk about education, the youth and the preventive system.

The general board was made up by Father Jorge Molina, inspector of salesians in Ecuador and the chancellor of UPS;  Father Javier Herran, UPS president; Luis Tobar, UPS general vice president; Juan Pablo Salgado, head of research, and Jose Juncosa, UPS vice president in Quito. 

Father Molina asked participants to think about salesian education. "Don Bosco wanted to be with youngsters. Education is a life experience and love from educators which is made up by human and spiritual dimensions with preventive capabilities", he said. He then asked them to study, make a commitment, and implement the fundamentals of good practices of the preventive system within their own context.

The first keynote speech was led by Jorge Benedicto, a sociologist, a professor at UNED, in Spain and member of the youth, childhood, policies, cultures and institutions research group, who spoke about his topic titled "What candidate, for what society?

He said that citizenship is a mechanism of integration based on the recognition of belonging and the ability of intervention. "Youngsters should be citizens that exercise citizenship in order to break the scheme that people should first learn about something before doing something. It is a call for action", he said.

He said the biggest challenge is to educate active citizens which means learning skills, languages, symbols and speeches through practice and in places of everyday life such as school,  the street and social networks.

Colombian professor, German Muñoz, who has broad experience in topics regarding youngsters and cultures, spoke about preventiveness as well as a historic moments in Latin America, such as femicide in Argentina, the peace process in Colombia, youth in Mexico, and the presence of young people in social networks, all interacting in the construction of citizenship. 

He added that it is not possible to impose one type of citizenship since it must be built as a daily process which involves differences. 

Claudius Ceccón, Pablo Vommaro and Geraldo Caliman were also speakers at the event.