In an increasingly fractured and uncertain world, Pope Francis called for the renewal of Catholic education to more explicitly emphasize human dignity, solidarity, and integral development. Under his pontificate, he established the Global Compact on Education to bring together stakeholders across Catholic education. This project seeks to support that renewal by integrating the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) into Catholic curricula, leadership training, and family engagement. The effort is led by the International Office of Catholic Education (OIEC), which coordinates Catholic education in 110 countries and represents more than 210,000 schools, 68 million students, and 8 million teachers. 

Building on the Catholic mission to form the whole person — mind, heart, and hands — the project identifies the IDGs as a practical framework and shared language that can resonate across religious and nonreligious contexts alike. OIEC also sees strong alignment between the IDG framework and Catholic social teaching, viewing the IDGs as a way to connect inner growth, empathy, meaning, and purpose with social cohesion, peacebuilding, and progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To put this into practice, the project will adapt the Global Leadership for Sustainable Development model (developed through the TWCF-supported projects: Human Flourishing for Sustainable Development and Inner Development and Human Flourishing Ecosystems to Accelerate the SDGs) for Catholic contexts and implement it in countries including Albania, Equatorial Guinea, India, Morocco, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, and Spain. Activities include workshops and digital support sessions, the co-creation of Catholic-aligned IDG toolkits, and outreach to approximately 15,000 students and their families.

A mixed-methods monitoring, evaluation, and learning system will assess changes in educator practice, school culture, student wellbeing, and family and community engagement. Expected outputs include translated and localized toolkits, training programs, and implementation reports from each country, followed by dissemination through Catholic networks and international platforms.