FAMVIN: The International Vincentian Family

This week’s featured project, the story of of a woman named Belaynish, represents a small window into the numerous diverse works of the Daughters of Charity as they collaborate with local people in villages and communities around the globe as they match funding partners with their vital projects and programs.
The Daughters of Charity are overseeing year three [...]

Sister Felicia Mazzola, D.C., Director of International Project Services, talks about the scope of projects which have emerged from the local people with the support of the Daughters, living and working within their communities around the world.
As such many of their projects embody one or other aspects of systemic change, during coming months we will [...]

In this series of short video interviews of participants at th Vincentian Family Gathering in Detroit they express some of what they learned and took away with them. Among those being interviewed – Sheila Gilbert, Roger Playwin and a number of the younger participants.

These words, See it, Film it, Change it!, represent another approach to systemic change. The website WITNESS uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. “We empower people to transform personal stories of  abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.” See their [...]

What do all these groups have in common?
Arkansas Rice Depot, Arkansas Foodbank Network, Americorps, Catholic Charities,  Cooperative Baptist Fellowship,  Congregation of the Mission, Daughters of Charity, FEMA, Ladies of Charity, VOAD, UMCOR,  Presbyterian Church, Vincent dePaul Society, United Methodist Church, Arkansas Crisis Response Team, and the Adventist Disaster Response.
They are all responding to [...]

Sr. Mary Jo Toll, SND shares another perspective on Seeds of Hope. Sr. Mary Jo is a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame of the Toledo Province. She currently is NGO Representative of the worldwide Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame at the United Nations where her work focuses on [...]

Many who work among the poor speak use a phrase that captures a key purpose of their work: systemic change. This potent idea has captured the attention and imagination of leaders of the Vincentian Family. Why? One way to look at that question is to think about the concept of systems.
A place to start is [...]

That is the opinion of Sr. Margaret Fitzpatrick, SC in this weeks installment in the Lent for Systemic Change series. She is a Sister of Charity and President of St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York. She  points out how the book can be used in various settings as a tool for promoting deeper understanding [...]

A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger. The story of Brazil’s fourth largest city Belo Horizonte, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 % of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 % of its children going hungry. Then [...]

The keynote speakers at the North American Vincentian Family Gathering April 16-19, Allison Boisvert and Eddie Friel present insights into different but deeply inter-related dimensions of “systemic change” – the personal and structural.
This week we feature Eddie Friel, one of the key figures in transforming Glasgow, Scotland from a perceived decaying industrial city [...]

In this second Lenten podcast series Roger Playwin, Executive Director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society USA, offers his reflections on the “Systemic Change” thrust of the Vincentian Vamily. Podcast

The Commission for Promoting Systemic Change is committed to a Lenten series on Famvin. As part of that series, they have had a comic strip presentation prepared about the notion of systemic change and various successful systemic change projects.  Fr. Robert Maloney writes “I hope that the many users of famvin find it helpful”
Web [...]

This represents the final installment of the reports from the meeting in Mexico on Systemic Change and the Vincentian Family.

Registration for the Vincentian Family Gathering, April 16-19, 2009, is accessible:  www.vincentianfamilygathering.org.   Registration online will require a credit card payment.  If you prefer to mail in your registration (including check), see attached registration form.  Registration fee(s) covers conference and meals; housing is separate.

Toma in Poland continues to offer the translations of the Chronicles of th Vincentian Family meeting in Mexico on systemic change  from the Spanish famvin site. Links for days one and two.