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The International Council of the International Young Christian Workers was a timely event organized by its activists every 4 years to identify where the movement is today, and how it will go forward. Our fast-evolving world has generated closer interaction among people but it has created different situations in every country and continent. These developments have had consequences and impact in the world of work, affecting thousands of workers, and young workers in particular.
The three-week activity started on September 21 and ended on October 9, 2016. It began with the exchange program hosted by YCW Germany, YCW Wallonia and YCW Flanders in 5 key cities in Europe, namely Brussels, Liege, Aachen, Munster and Wurzburg. 27 national movements took part in it, interacting and interchanging information about different realities of the young workers today: precarious work, temporary workers, migrants, refugees, unemployed, informal workers and gender discrimination at work.
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On the occasion of the XIV International Council of the International Young Christian Workers (IYCW), current and former leaders of the YCW movement gathered in Herzogenrath, near Aachen, Germany, from 24th till 26th September for the IYCW International Colloquy, aimed at developing cooperation between the various generations of YCW leaders.
Click here to see photos of the Colloquy and of the opening of the Council.
On the first day of the Colloquy, former YCW leaders could hear the main challenges facing IYCW today. IYCW president, Ludovicus Mardiyono, and treasurer Andy Predicala, shared their reflections on the needs and challenges faced by the movement today.
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On November 21, three well-known international organizations held a seminar on “Women’s Participation and Empowerment in the World.” With the collaboration of Entraide et Fraternité, the MIJARC (International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth), the FIMARC (International Federation of Catholic Rural Adult Movements) and the IYCW (International Young Christian Workers) agreed to organize this seminar, in which young and adult women from countries such as Paraguay, Nicaragua, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Haiti, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic participated.
The seminar, which was held online, had the important contributions of three participants from Peru, Nicaragua and Paraguay, who explained what it means to be a woman in their countries and described the reality they face in all aspects of their lives.
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IYCW News - The Americas YCW (JOCA) organised a virtual exchange on 9 and 16 July 2021. The aim was to share about realities, needs, challenges and actions re unemployment and precarious young workers in the world of work at the continental level.
Participants in the event were young workers, activists and adults from different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, as well as a young German volunteer in Peru.
“The current global health crisis (Covid-19) has made even more visible the inequalities that we live in our societies; some of us have reinvented ways of work for survival while those who still have a job are submerged in long working hours and faced with double workload. Their salaries are often not enough to cover one or two meals a day plus other fixed costs. In addition, the cost of food, transportation and connectivity has increased,” Ana Cecilia from the Americas YCW team explained.
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“I was impressed to see that YCW Nicaragua has a plan about their gender action. It is elaborate, with objectives and everything. It made me wonder why we don’t have such a plan in the Walloon YCW.”
This is a statement from Zoe, a fulltimer in the Walloon YCW, telling other French-speaking comrades about her experience in the Spanish-speaking exchange. When describing her action on gender in the Walloon YCW, she presented a national action group giving space to young women and LGBTQI to act together.
Just like her, other delegates from Gabon, Haiti, Congo Brazzaville, Germany, Ghana, Peru, Indonesia, Wallonia (Belgium) and Nicaragua accepted the IYCW gender commission’s invitation to meet in different spaces organized according to time zones and languages in order to exchange about their actions related to gender. When sharing experiences about gender-based violence and discrimination, it became obvious that existing inequalities increased even more because of the current global pandemic. As Rony from Indonesia reported:
“It is a real challenge that many women in Indonesia do not have any health insurance. This is always bad, but it is a real challenge in such a health crisis. Also, many health workers, who are the front-liners right now in our country, are females.”
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As part of the celebrations of the "International Week of Young Workers" and "May Day", the IYCW organized an online debate on the impact of digitalization on work, life and action on April 30.
With the participation of activists of the movement from different countries and continents, as well as a large number of representatives of social organizations, trade unions, people involved in international cooperation and former activists, the online debate was able to clarify, in its different dimensions, the impact of digitalization on young workers’ lives.
Based on the testimonies and life experiences collected and analyzed, the IYCW noted that young workers, most of whom are forced into precarious work, without contracts or with short-term contracts signed by temporary work agencies, or working in "maquilas", in the informal sector of the economy or in rural areas, as well as students and unemployed youth, do not benefit from the social and economic opportunities presented as advantages of digitalization.
