- Details
-
Also available:
By Jacques Hanon
“From the outset, Cardijn placed the ‘worker issue’ in its international context. Only a powerful global movement would bring about the collective liberation of the working class.”
It is a fact that the international dimension of the YCW project has been present right from the start.
Cardijn, as a priest in the parish of Notre-Dame de Laeken, created the 1st group of young women workers in 1912. But it should be noted that, immediately after his ordination in 1906, he began studying, not Religious Sciences or Theology, but Political and Social Sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven. He was fascinated by the concrete study of reality through investigative work, and made study trips, notably to Great Britain, the 1st industrial power of the time, to study the living and working conditions of workers and how they organized themselves.
- Details
-
Also available:
My retirement last July was an opportunity to celebrate with friends and travel companions. It was also an ideal moment to look back on all the decades during which I have been – and remain – linked to the YCW. My commitment has led me professionally into many other contexts such as neighborhood work, work with migrants and refugees and, in recent years, the training work of the Catholic Worker movement (KAB) in my region. It is the YCW's “SEE-JUDGE-ACT” method that has always spurred me into action. Looking back, I am simply grateful to this youth movement for connecting me with countless people. There is a word for connection: “UBUNTU.” It is a South African philosophy which means: “I am because we are.”
- Details
-
Also available:
The capitalist society that relies on overexploitation of resources, overproduction and overconsumption is inexorably dragging the planet and its inhabitants towards a precipice.
The consequences of this destructive way of organizing society are visible for humanity and the territories. There are numerous examples of this: the multiplication of natural disasters, melting ice caps, seas that consume coastlines, epidemics that break out... not to mention the floods that follow one another everywhere: in Belgium, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Brazil... So many cases of mass destruction...
We have no choice but to strengthen solidarity... Current and former generations of YCW activists are involved in these struggles, and are also showing their solidarity in this time of urgent need!
- Details
-
Also available:
This Eucharistic prayer was written by Albert Hari * in the 1970s and has been slightly adapted to today's context.
Lord our Father, you love humankind, your children.
Who have lived on this earth for over a million years.
For hundreds of thousands of years, they lived in extreme poverty.
Little by little, they learned to polish stone, make tools, build fires, cultivate the land, domesticate animals, speak and write, and build huts, houses and towns.
They organised themselves into tribes, peoples and nations.
They loved each other, they joined together. They fought against the cold, animals and a hostile environment.
They struggled for their particular interests. They fought amongst themselves, tribe against tribe, people against people.
They exploited one other. The rich crushed the poor. Slavery emerged.
They created gods for themselves. They projected their hopes onto them. They expected them to fertilise the soil, to make their homes fertile, to defeat their enemies...
Through all this trial and error, all these advances, all these weaknesses, you have never turned your back on people.
- Details
-
Also available:
The weekend of February 16-18 took us to Belgium, to the Management Committee of the International Cardijn Association (ICA). This team is composed of people from different generations of IYCW leaders and the current International Secretariat. Basma, Leizyl, Cecilia, Arlindo, Michele, Mardi, Bernhard and Marinete attended the meeting.
The objectives of the meeting were, among others, to get an overview of the current situation of the movement in the different countries, to evaluate the general activity of the IYCW and to plan for the coming years, with particular emphasis on the celebration of the CENTENARY of the YCW.
- Details
-
Also available:
A few days ago, our friend Jo Weber celebrated his 90th birthday, and we would like to pay tribute to him!
Josef Weber was born in Alsace on 28 February 1934. He grew up in Lingolsheim, a small town near Strasbourg.
Jo played a key role in shaping the International JOC, as an activist at local level, as full-time coordinator of the French YCW, and later as European Secretary and International Treasurer. He was a close collaborator of Josef Cardijn, and after the death of the latter, he initiated the International Cardijn Foundation (ICF), the forerunner organization of today's International Cardijn Association (ICA).
Jo Weber was the main organizer of the European Rally to Strasbourg in the summer of 1964, which brought together 25,000 young workers from all over the continent and was a powerful demonstration of organized working-class youth in Europe. The congress with 300 delegates presented to the Council of Europe the “Working Youth Manifesto” and drew public attention to the situation of young workers in Europe.
- Details
-
Also available:
Bartolo Perez was born in São Paulo (Brazil) on November 20, 1925.
He was a teacher and trainer at the University of Porto Alegre. Of Spanish origin, his parents, Francisco and Josefa, arrived in Brazil during the immigration period in the early 20th century.
At the age of 14, he began working as an apprentice turner in a small auto parts factory. It was in this factory, in 1942, that 16-year-old Bartolo Perez met young Emídio, a YCW activist who helped him look at reality: "I was very curious to know what dignity was, what it meant," Bartolo said in an interview a few years ago.
Thus, the young worker’s awareness was raised and he started carrying out militant actions with his comrades. One of the first actions was to go to the union to denounce the working situation of young people in the factory.
This is how Bartolo joined the YCW group in the Mooca neighborhood in the Sao Paulo region.
