Enrique Figaredo Alvargonzalez

“Cambodia Within Reach” was the slogan adopted for the 2008 dance tour, in which “Tahen’s Dance Group” travelled throughout Spain for 6 weeks in September and October 2008. Tahen’s Dance Group is made up of 65 members and divides in 4 smaller groups. One group is made up of 14 dancers between 14 and 17 years old, another with 18 dancers between 18 and 20. A third group has 15 dancers from the Arrupe Centre for people with disabilities (maimed by landmines and cluster bombs or who suffer from poliomyelitis). The last group is that made up of 10 musicians and 3 people for management and assistance.

Dance tours have been an initiative fostered by Figaredo in order to promote Cambodia, its culture and its reality. It is also a means of raising funds for the aid and development projects in Cambodia. Up to date there have been three dance tours in the years 2000, 2005 and 2008.

In 1991, in Phnom Penh, he founded Banteay Prieb (“The Dove House”) where children maimed by landmines receive education and people with disabilities can make wheelchairs following the Mekong model (a wooden wheelchair with three wheels).

In 1985, during his university studies, he volunteered for the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and was sent to a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. He returned to Spain to finish his studies and to be ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1992, but then immediately went back to Cambodia.

Enrique attended the Jesuit’s School in Gijon, Colegio de la Inmaculada, and graduated in 1976. On 15 October 1979, he joined the Jesuit Novitiate. He has a degree in Economics, Theology and Philosophy.

Enrique Figaredo (born 21 September 1959) is a Jesuit priest and the Apostolic Prefect of Battambang, known as the Bishop of the Wheelchairs for his humanitarian assistance in Cambodia.