Big rivers emerge from small springs. They spring forth in remote hills. Big ideas to change the world are also born on the edge. Great movements to transform societies do not start from the centre: they start in small places and incubate in some unknown sections of society. Rosa Parks refused to give up her…
Read more
“A simple reception and some kind of accommodation” are “very different from a process of integration”. A personal experience. In about the year 2000, the U.K. government decided that it would send the largest number of its asylum seekers to Glasgow, an area that had never had new arrivals in large numbers except escapees from…
Read moreTo Missionaries, living the Gospel in a radical fashion is a way of advocating for the poor and the earth. The devise, Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation is a distant horizon that, however, continually attracts and directs their fragile and sometimes contradictory steps. One of these steps is to invest in the agroecology promoted…
Read more
The UN Food Systems Summit was set out to review food systems to see if they ensure that the goal well defined by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, is achieved: “Build a world in which healthy and nutritious food is available and affordable for everyone, everywhere. But this should not be at the expense…
Read more
On August 23, 2021, at the Tacagua’ camp of Challapata, Oruro (Bolivia), thanks to the support of the CASA Collective, about 150 members of the communities that make up the National Network of Women in Defense of Mother Earth gathered. The concern was the threat of mining companies in their attempt to explore in order…
Read moreAdvocacy is also defense when it acts to preserve the initial aims and values of modern discoveries. According to legend, when Vladimir Lenin was asked how he planned to “hang all the capitalists” in the face of a rope shortage in the young Soviet Union, he replied “don’t worry comrade; the capitalists will sell us…
Read more
Advocacy is both defending people, especially the poor and vulnerable ones, and actions promoting values. Splitting the two, people and values, however, brings advocacy to a cleft stick of becoming a tricky ideological issue. Insofar, a clear set of values on the background of any advocacy is of acute need. Two significant examples are on…
Read moreAdvocacy is concerned with values, awareness and knowledge of problems to promote actions, policies and changes in the issues that interest people. Advocacy does not always aim, right from the start, at concrete results. Sometimes the right or desire of a person or a group involves too many values and too many instances to offer…
Read more
Since April 2020, the European Commission has defined the EU strategy to support the fight against COVID-19 globally through an action plan called Team Europe, which combines and coordinates resources from the EU, its Member countries, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and other EU financial institutions, in synergy with…
Read moreMother’s Day for the year 2021 is celebrated on Sunday, May 9th. It is a time to honor mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers for their contribution to family and society. What about those mothers who are the primary providers for the majority of the world’s 925 million hungry people? Women produce 60 to 80 per cent of all food, both…
Read moreClimate change is disrupting our world and the temperature has risen one degree centigrade and it will not go back. We have reached a point of no return and that is a security risk to the planet and to every nation. We can stop it rising higher. One of the grave security risks is the…
Read moreIn the Autumn of 2011, the Occupy movement was growing like a weed – quickly and strongly. In groups as small as two and as large as 200,000, people gathered in public spaces around the world to challenge an economic system that has long abandoned the majority for the profit of a few, creating what…
Read more
In Burkina Faso, the ‘Mother of the Sahel’ brings education and hope to forcibly displaced children. As conflict forced thousands of children to flee to the…
Read more
As the sun sets over the stony plateau of Mexico, a beautiful white flower opens its corolla among the blade-like thorns of the Cereus Nycticalis: it…
Read more
With the highest percentage of her population made up of youth, Africa is a bed of opportunities for growth and prosperity. The African youth are a…
Read more
