FAMVIN: The International Vincentian Family

The food crisis is threatening “the attainment of the primary right of every person to be free from starvation,” said Archbishop Migliori, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, at yesterday’s general debate of the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Substantive Session for 2008.

Successfully addressing poverty requires that “people living in poverty must have a voice in deciding their own destiny, fighting for rights and justice in their own society, and holding states and the private sector to account.” It also requires that states act as effective managers and agents of change.

In a message to the U.N. Food Summit, Pope Benedict called hunger and malnutrition “unacceptable in a world that, in reality, possesses production levels, resources and sufficient knowledge to put an end to these dramas and their consequences.”

In Ireland, the SSVDP reports that middle class couples with mortgages are the fastest growing group seeking charitable assistance and advice. Rising energy costs and food bills mean that “financial difficulties are spilling out and crossing socio-economic groups.”

“When one is engaged in face-to-face charity and journeying with people the wider issues inevitably arise.” Speaking a meeting of the St. Vincent de Paul Society Bob McKeon who has lived in the inner city by choice for 30 years sees how one thing leads to another.

St. John’s Bread and Life soup kitchen in Brooklyn, NY, founded 26 years ago by Daughter of Charity Bernadette Szymczak (d. 1998) and still served by the Daughters and a Sister of Charity, is featured in today’s New York Times. Technology has an important role in services they provide. Read the article.

We have just received notice of an exciting new blog devoted to Political Charity and Vincentian Formation. The commission on Charism and Cultures and the Asia Pacific Regional Formators have been grappling with these concepts for over a decade and have now mounted a blog to expand the conversation.

From mowing lawns to meeting needs of the marginalized, young Vincentian and Catholic social entrepreneurs grow up. Read more about de Paul University students and the prominent place of Catholic univiersities in the movement to serve the world and make a profit.

UNESCO Brazil promoted a composition contest on the topic: “How to Stop Poverty and Inequality” - A young member of the Vincent dePaul Society used the metaphor of a recipe for baking a cake and took home the prize.

In a “love is inventive unto infinity” story that Vincent would enjoy, Green TV’s short segment called “Once Upon a Mattress” documents the St. Vincent dePaul Society’s (Lane County, Oregon), mattress recycling plant. “We really are the only commercially viable mattress recycler in the world”

As the food crisis grows, a report finds four billion people are excluded from the rule of law the UN Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor makes a global call to make legal empowerment a key pillar of the anti-poverty agenda.

Instead of explaining the desperate plight of the homeless at the Society of St. Vincent DePaul (Australia) 2008 appeal launch last week, the society gave disposable cameras to 100 marginalised people in New South Wales and asked them to take a snapshot of their life.

“Can a company make money from the work of impoverished people in the developing world without taking advantage of them?” is the question raised in a Wharton School of Business newsletter.

50 economists examine ten of the world’s biggest challenges and place as Number 1 because of its “immediate and important consequences for improving the wellbeing of poor people around the world,” to combat malnutrition in the 140 million children in the world who are undernourished.

Microplace, an online brokerage service that enables people to make investments that earn a return while empowering the poor to work their way out of poverty, has launched its “Small Change. Big Change” campaign, designed to turn spare nickels and quarters into agents of change.