IYCW DAY!

Today, August 25, we celebrate another year of the International Young Christian Workers movement.

For generations, young workers around the world have come together to look at their reality, to understand it, and to act to transform it.

From the beginning, the YCW has been more than an organisation. It has been a movement built by young workers themselves — young people who refuse to accept that injustice, exploitation and exclusion are simply the way things have to be.

Last year, we celebrated 100 years of this journey.

We looked back at the generations who built the movement, at the struggles they faced, the victories they achieved, and the hope they carried forward.

But a centenary is not an ending. It is a reminder that history is now in our hands.

Today, young workers are facing new realities.

• Precarious and informal work.
• Unemployment and underemployment.
• Low wages and rising living costs.
• Discrimination and insecurity.
• And new forms of work that are changing what it means to be a worker.

Across the world, many young people are asking the same questions:

• How can we have decent work?
• How can we live with dignity?
• How can we have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives?
• And how can we build a society that puts people before profit?

These questions are not only questions for governments, employers or institutions.

They are questions for us.

And this is where the YCW continues to have a role.

We believe that young workers are not simply people who need to be represented.

Young workers can organise.

Young workers can lead.

Young workers can transform their communities and their workplaces.

Through our method of See, Judge and Act, we continue to start from real life — from the experiences of young people themselves — to understand our reality and to take action together.

Today, the International YCW is made up of young people in different countries, cultures and realities.

But we remain united by the same conviction:

that every young worker deserves dignity, justice, decent work and a future with hope.

The generations before us carried this movement forward.

Now it is our turn.

And the question is not simply what the YCW has been.

The question is:

What will we build together for the next generation?

On this International YCW Day, we celebrate our history.

We honour those who came before us.

And, above all, we renew our commitment to the young workers of today and tomorrow.

The struggle continues.

The movement continues.

And the future is ours to build — together.

Happy International YCW Day.