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Created: 07 September 2018

The 2016 International Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in partnership with the Unesco was held from 12 to 14 December in Paris. The conference focused on the theme “The challenge of the digital revolution for NGOs” and was organized around four subthemes: “The digital revolution and its impact on the diversity of cultural expressions”; “The challenge of access to digital information”; “Does e-learning address challenges of education systems worldwide?”; and, “Science and the digital revolution: which ethical implications?” The International YCW took an active part in it and made its contribution to the debate.

The digital issue is at the very heart of social stakes, resulting in new developments, opportunities but also major challenges. Therefore, all social organizations, but also the society as a whole, will have to face it. According to the Unesco, « The digital revolution has fundamentally altered the way in which cultural goods and services are produced, distributed and accessed.  Indeed, the accelerated expansion of social networks and user generated content (UGC), the explosion of data created by cloud computing and the proliferation of connected multimedia devices – smartphones, tablets, phablets, e-readers – in the hands of the users have had a huge impact on the cultural scene, in both the global North and South. Technological changes have led to the emergence of new players and new logics»^[1]. 

During the conference, the IYCW insisted on the two components of the “digital revolution.” It underlined on the one hand the opportunities it offers to our social organization, whether through communication, exchange, the capacity of mobilization, the intensification of interaction, or in terms of visibility, and on the other hand the dangers and challenges it poses, such as surveillance and the creation of monopolies. Increasingly precarious working conditions, in particular for young people, the promotion of consumerism, and most of all the negative impact on social security and social protection, including in the field of participation and financing (unpaid taxes and security of workers in companies) are dangers facing the world of work.

At the Conference, we had the opportunity to meet several friendly organizations, including representatives of the International Young Catholic Students (IYCS), the Centre Catholique International de Coopération avec l’Unesco (CCIC), and the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO).

For more information, please visit the Unesco website.

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Created: 13 April 2019

For years now, YCW Bavaria has been actively campaigning for the protection of Sunday to be free from work. It aims for the workers to have time to spend with family, play soccer with friends, establish relationships with the community, go to Church, participate in social voluntary work and build organizations. The action is against big shops that open on Sunday and some shops that extend the closing hours until 11 in the evening.

Sundays and legal holidays are defined as days of rest protected by the Basic Law and the Bavarian Constitution. However, some shops open during sales periods, Sunday markets and feast days, and on other special occasions, taking advantage of community activities to open.

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Created: 01 February 2019

The Caritas in Veritate Foundation recently presented their tenth working paper. Recent decades have witnessed the consolidation of a global economic system strongly characterised by exclusion and inequality as a result of a largely excessive and misplaced trust in the omnipotence of the markets. Today, the distortions and dysfunctions of the free market economy tend to adversely affect the lives of individuals and communities more than ever before. Consequently, work itself, together with its dignity, is increasingly at risk of losing its value as a “good” for the human person and becoming merely a means of exchange within asymmetrical social relations. This calls us to rethink and reconsider what labour is and what it means for the economy, society, policy.

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Created: 09 March 2019

109 years ago, the Second International Conference of Women was held in Copenhagen, the demand for universal suffrage for all women was reiterated and, at the proposal of Clara Zetkin, 8 March was proclaimed International Women's Day. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the labour movement maintained a traditional patriarchal position on women's equality and demands. It was in the middle of the nineteenth century when the women's movements became stronger, with the struggle for women's suffrage, the demand for equality, the denunciation of social, family and labour oppression.