Not many organizations can celebrate the 400th anniversary of their founding with 150,000 members! As part of their preparation to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Vincent’s dePaul’s first foundation, Laurence de la Brosse, International President of the AIC writes to all National Association Presidents and their members…
On 27th September we embarked together on the path to our 400th anniversary; the action plan developed for this occasion proposes for the first phase:
2013-2014: Internalize the spirit of Saint Vincent
How can we do this?
2013: Knowing about AIC!
The two training booklets from October are there to help us.
The October spiritual training booklet allows us to immerse ourselves once again in the spirit of Saint Vincent, the October technical training booklet helps us understand “AIC: Our Association”.
The aim of this phase is for AIC volunteers to become reenchanted by Saint Vincent’s spirit and project! Therefore wherever we are, we must all pass on and share these documents among our volunteers and encourage them to study them: Knowing AIC allows us to firmly accept and commit ourselves to our vocation as volunteers.
At the last PC meeting, we agreed that to meet this objective it is necessary to communicate information as widely as possible; this letter is therefore also being sent to the members of your National Councils, those for whom we have email addresses.
Please help us to achieve this objective by sending the e-mail addresses of the members of your National Council to info@aic-international.org.
2014: Letting ourselves be enchanted by Saint Vincent’s project!
Each month, all the subscribers to AIC training booklets will receive in their email inbox a document to study during AIC team meetings; together these documents will form the 2014 training booklet which will be published in December. The training team, coordinated by Selina Suarez from AIC-Venezuela, has worked very hard on this and I thank everyone involved wholeheartedly. Thanks to them we can better understand and internalize “St Vincent’s spirit and project” which have inspired our AIC for 400 years.
As you may have already seen on our website, on 25th November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, an AIC project in Naranjos, Peru, was awarded the Jean and Claire Delva Prize 2013. It simultaneously combines elements of combatting violence and of education (our Operational Guidelines).
The aim of this project is to support 70 women who are victims of domestic violence. The AIC volunteers in Naranjos are going to organize workshops aimed at preventing situations of violence, learning how to manage them and encouraging the building of self-esteem. They will be offered training to learn how to make food products with the goal of beginning an income-generating activity. Finally, some women will receive training in leadership and self-management in order to be able to continue the production activities and in turn pass on what they have learned in order to ensure the continuity of the project.
We would like to give our warmest congratulations to the Naranjos volunteers and our full encouragement to all those across the world who dedicate themselves to fighting violence against women.
It will soon be Christmas.
How can we celebrate Christmas? A young woman from Indonesia told me: “The most important thing at Christmas is to become closer to one another.”
May we, as AIC volunteers, become closer to those around us and be like 150,000 little lamps all over the world which give out the light of Jesus, bringing Him closer to everyone, especially those in the most need.
Along with everyone in the EB, I send my warmest wishes to you and those you love,
Laurence de la Brosse
International President
Tags: AIC, AIC400, Brosse, LCUSA
