The event will feature a moderated conversation between Cardinal Peter Turkson, Prefect, Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development, and John Carr, Initiative Director, with responses from Arturo Chavez, President and CEO of Mexican-American Catholic College, and Amy Rauenhorst Goldman, CEO and Chair of GHR Foundation.
Pope Francis has chosen Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to lead the new Vatican Dicastery on Integral Human Development. As the Pope’s key ally, Cardinal Turkson leads the Vatican’s teaching and advocacy on issues of justice and peace, economic inequality, and global solidarity. As a priest, bishop and Cardinal from Africa, Peter Turkson brings unique experience, knowledge and urgency to promoting and applying Catholic teaching on human life and dignity, a priority for the poor, and the pursuit of peace. Join us for this unique conversation and opportunity to ask questions of Pope Francis’ key collaborator in sharing his social mission and message throughout the world.
For more information, please visit the event website.
Solidarity is sometimes understood as the bedrock of Catholic Social Teaching. In a 2014 address to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Pope Francis noted that “solidarity is the attitude that enables people to reach out to others and establish mutual relations on this sense of brotherhood that overcomes differences and limits, and inspires us to seek the common good together.”
One way to live this attitude is by promoting initiatives related to the dignity of work and workers’ rights, poverty alleviation, and economic justice, all themes ingrained in Catholic Social Teaching. Many Catholic colleges live solidarity through partnerships with the community to address these themes, including through relationships with groups like the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ domestic anti-poverty program.
One example of living solidarity with the local community can be found at St. John’s University (SJU) in its partnership with the Don Bosco Workers (DBW), a local “grassroots community-organizing group” funded by CCHD. The group advocates “for full and fair participation in the labor market” through the leadership of “Latino immigrant day laborers and other low-income workers.” For three years, SJU has partnered with DBW to bring an example of fighting for worker justice directly to students.
Under the leadership of Meghan Clark, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology and religious studies, the partnership has become a fruitful relationship. Each semester, DBW representatives visit Clark’s students in her course on CST. According to Clark, “DBW has shared their stories with around 150 students over four campus visits.” The visits have led to the creation of the Solidarity Festival, which flowed from a desire for “a bigger conversation,” Clark notes. In April 2016, the festival entailed a day of on-campus presentations, including one that featured DBW in a panel on wage theft, as well as a display of social justice artwork, SJU Fair Trade, SJU CRS Ambassadors, GLOBE (the university’s academic program on microfinancing), and economics students’ research on forced labor in Brazil. The day ended with a Mass for worker justice celebrated by Fr. Patrick Griffin, the director of SJU’s Vincentian Center for Church and Society.
St. John’s students and Don Bosco Workers Representatives discuss worker justice. Photo credit: Meghan Clark.
Clark emphasizes that the partnership flows from SJU’s Vincentian identity: “The Vincentian question is ‘What must be done?’ Through conversation with DBW, students see both how the worker center asks, discerns, and pragmatically answers the question, ‘What must be done?’ with respect to wage theft and exploitation of day laborers.” The DBW-SJU partnership is a locus of real-life applications of CST.
Another example of a CCHD-campus partnership can be found at St. Thomas University in Miami, FL which works with People Acting for Community Together (PACT), a local coalition of faith-based organizations and church communities that focuses on social and economic justice. According to Darrell Arnold, Ph.D., secretary of PACT, professor of philosophy, and interim dean of the Biscayne College at the university, the organizations and their representatives hale mostly from underserved and disadvantaged areas of Miami. Through his courses, Arnold brings his ethics students on a yearly immersion trip through the university’s Center for Community Engagement to Immokalee, FL, where they spend time with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The coalition is a ground-up, “worker-based” organization known for its work in “social responsibility, human trafficking, and gender-based violence at work,” according to its website. When students go to Immokalee, they tend to “walk away shocked,” Arnold says, by the injustices endured by the community. Many students return to Immokalee and participate in activism and advocacy with the coalition.
In addition to the Immokalee immersion trips, Arnold reports that students participate in three immersion trips to Haiti, where they continue to promote worker justice, as well as fair trade initiatives. In Haiti, students have the choice to work with a fair trade coffee company, a women’s artisan group, or a solar panel project. Each of these projects and the work with PACT and the coalition are unique in that they are mutually beneficial to the students, organizations, and the communities. Arnold says that the immersion trips and the work with PACT flow from a “subculture of professors and scholars that are interested in social justice,” which helps St. Thomas engage with CST in various disciplines, so that students, faculty, and staff might more fully live their values.
At the Seattle University School of Law, students are invited to use their legal skills in solidarity with the local community. A Jesuit institution, Seattle University takes very seriously the call to promote and work toward social justice. The School of Law does so in a number of ways, such as the Frances Perkins Post-Graduate Fellowship, sponsored by the Access to Justice Institute (ATJI) and the Unemployment Law Project with support from private donors. The institute “creates opportunities for law students to work in non-profits and organizations that really do try and serve the most needy” in the local community, according to the 2015 Perkins Fellow Andrés E. Muñoz. Muñoz has been working full time for the past year at the Unemployment Law Project, a not-for-profit law firm that “represents unemployed workers for little to no cost.” He says that the not-for-profit nature of the project “allows us to really represent people who need it and who otherwise would not have an attorney by their side at their hearings.” Through the Perkins fellowship, Muñoz has been able not only to gain invaluable “legal practice that can transfer well,” but also “to provide outreach to immigrant and refugee communities.” He says the Unemployment Law Project “recognizes that those groups of people are even more disadvantaged in many ways when it comes to any aspect of the legal system. Unemployment is no exception.”
The associate director of ATJI and director of postgraduate fellowships Jennifer Werdell believes that “the school’s Jesuit identity informs our commitment to social justice.” She continues, “Our work at ATJI and where we steer students within that is largely driven by community needs.”
Muñoz echoes the organic, ground-up nature of the institute’s work in his work at the law project. He says the populations of people he serves “need a voice,” a voice that he has been amplifying for the past year. Through their work, Werdell, Muñoz, and the School of Law exemplify what it means to extend the work of a university far beyond campus to the margins of society, where the need is most intense.
These examples show that Catholic colleges and universities are no strangers to working with marginalized and disadvantaged populations. Through the work of St. John’s University with the Don Bosco Workers, St. Thomas University with PACT, and Seattle University School of Law with local non-profit organizations such as the Unemployment Law Project, Catholic higher education clearly exemplifies ways in which the Church can be in solidarity with others in the community and work together to advance the well-being of all. In so doing, Catholic higher education not only upholds the long history of Catholic Social Teaching and Catholic commitment to justice, but also the commitment to, in the words of the Holy Father, “seek the common good together.” These examples have shown what it means to truly be the body of Christ manifest.
Justine Worden is an undergraduate student at Georgetown University and the Peace and Justice Intern at the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
In 2012, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the U.S. Department of Education found that almost a third of current undergraduates are considered first-generation college students. Driven by their faith-based mission, ACCU member institutions have developed a breadth of resources for first-generation students, as well as the administration, faculty, and staff who work with them.
In the Summer 2015 issue of Update, ACCU featured several success stories of Catholic colleges and universities’ service towards their first-generation and low-income students. ACCU also has dedicated a webpage to share information on serving first-generation students. Here are a few examples of programs ACCU members have instituted:
St. Mary’s College (CA) offers a High Potential Sphere of Success program, a federally funded TRIO Student Support Services Program, which is designed to cultivate the success of first-generation and low-income students through leadership development, peer mentoring, and financial support.
Silver Lake College of the Holy Family (WI) has adopted the Work College model, where all incoming residential freshman or transfer students will be required to work ten hours per week in a field related to their coursework, in exchange for $2,800 tuition credit per year.
Notre Dame de Namur University (CA) supports its first-generation students through a Bill Hannon Foundation grant for their Gen 1 program, which provides financial and academic support, as well as mentoring.
World Fair Trade Day, a day of celebration and awareness of fair trade initiatives organized by Fair Trade Campaigns on May 14, is the perfect opportunity to highlight some of the wonderful work Catholic organizations do around fair trade and making it accessible to colleges and universities.
These are only a few examples of Catholic higher education’s involvement with fair trade and economic justice. Be sure to check out the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resources on the economy and economic justice to learn more.
How does your college or university integrate Catholic identity with fair trade and economic justice? Let us know!
This week, Fordham University will host a conference titled, “Building Good Economies: An Interdisciplinary Conference Celebrating Catholic Social Teaching at 125.” In a convergence of higher education scholars, prominent experts in Catholic Social Teaching, and more, the conference will explore themes of economic justice, environmental justice, public health, and the 2016 presidential race.
Many speakers from Catholic higher education will present, including:
Professor Juliet Schor of Boston College, who will be giving a talk titled, “Toward a New Economy: Time, Creativity and Community”.
Additionally, the opening panel will feature Hernando de Soto, President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru. Responses will be given by Daniel Finn of Saint John’s University (MN) and Carolyn Woo.
The conference will take place Wednesday, April 20 to Friday, April 22, 2016 at the Fordham University Lincoln Center campus. Plenary sessions are free and open to the public. Register now to reserve a seat!
How does your college or university engage in dialogue on Catholic Social Teaching? Let us know!
Have you ever wondered what happens when an individual takes a payday loan? Typically, payday lenders issue an individual a loan with a large interest rate payable on the borrower’s payday. If the borrower cannot repay the loan, the lender collects interest and fees and changes the repayment date of the loan to the following payday. Since the average borrower rolls a loan for four months, the loan often more than doubles in price due to high interest rates and fees. According to University of Notre Dame, this structure costs South Bend, Indiana’s poor $3.5 million in interest fees in a given year. Given their knowledge about this injustice, some Notre Dame students have created an alternative.
In a recently published article, Notre Dame highlights the Jubilee Initiative for Financial Inclusion (JIFFI), a student run initiative with the mission to “create an alternative to the predatory lending industry in South Bend.” Since its inception in February 2012, JIFFI has provided a total of twenty-nine loans and hopes to provide 20 more this year.
In the article, Lisa McDaniel, the group’s first client, says, “‘JIFFI deserves a big thank you from the community. […] It’s fantastic if they help others as much as they’ve helped me.'” Read the full article to learn more about JIFFI.
How does your campus work towards economic justice? Let us know!
The Social Venture Boot Camp, offered through Catholic Charities USA’s (CCUSA) partnership with the University of Notre Dame, is an opportunity for CCUSA members to strengthen their social enterprise efforts and face the pressing challenges associated with financial sustainability head-on. Economic justice is a critical issue, and social venture is an innovative method to help address the root causes of poverty.
Boot camp participants will be paired up with business mentors, as well as upper-level undergraduate and/or graduate students, as available, in a workshop environment to research and analyze the existing or proposed product or service and work through a business plan that the social venture program can then use to help guide future growth.
Applications for the 2015 Social Venture Boot Camp are due no later than Monday, April 6, and acceptance will be confirmed by the first week of May. Preparation work will be necessary and will be due by Monday, June 15. If you have any questions about the Boot Camp or how your group can put forth a competitive application, please contact Maria Gonzales.
ACCU has created “Fair Trade and Catholic Higher Education”, highlighting how ACCU member institutions have engaged with the fair trade movement. To download the document, and view additional Fair Trade resources, please visit our website.
Did you know that students at Fordham University run their own Fair Trade business? View the website here, and let us know how your campus engages with Fair Trade!
Xavier University, a member college at ACCU, has been working with the CCHD-funded project Community Blend. See the video below to get a glimpse into the coffeeshop and the lives of the workers there, or follow this link to see how it all started!
Does your university partner with a CCHD-funded organization? Let ACCU know the great work you are doing!
The Florida farmworkers Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a CCHD funded group that has worked with ACCU member colleges before, has announced that their new FairFood program label is now in use. When you see this label in stores you’ll know that the tomatoes are from farms that ensure the basic human rights of the women and men in the fields.
These rights include safe working conditions free of sexual violence and forced labor, and that the workers on those farms are receiving the Fair Food “Penny per Pound” bonus.
Learn more about the Fair Food program by reading this article.
ACCU Peace and Justice 