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This is the on-line version of Link, the bimonthly newsletter of Fimcap.

Edition December 2005

General Information

Calendar [top]

A new European presidium [top]

Hallo, my name is Jürgen Leuser, the new president of Fimcap Europe elected a week ago at the Euroconference in Bratislava/Slovakia.

I am 31 years old and I live and work in Crailsheim, a small city in the south of Germany. I am still connected to my hometown, with the local parish group of KJG, the German Fimcap member organisation.

I entered KJG when I was ten, I became the leader of a youth group when 16 and a leader of the parish group when 18 years. Then when 21, I made my very first Fimcap experience by chance which was at the Euroforum in Natoye / Belgium.

I still remember, that there was an introduction to Fimcap, its members and its events. This presentation made me look at Fimcap with enthusiasm because there were opportunities for young people from my group to go abroad together, get connected connected with groups from another country and information on how to get funds for the actions as well.

I started with a Roundabout activity and this was more or less the beginning of frequent participation in several Euroforum and Roundabout events, as well as a Fimcap seminar in Malta and the “Feel the Spirit” – event of Fimcap and KJG at World Youth Day 2005. In these various events I experienced how enriching an intercultural exchange can be. It opens minds to cultural differences or similarities and makes you reflect about your own habits and ways of living.

Another point that kept me motivated is, that plenty of these experiences and contacts which were made during the past years still exist – some of them are loose contacts, some of them became close contacts which I do not want to miss anymore...

So for the next three years I want to devote my time to Fimcap together with the new presidium. I want to motivate people from member organisations to invite their groups and their friends to join Fimcap activities and make their own intercultural experiences.

At this point I also want to thank the former presidium – Doris Renggli, Corno de Mol and the spiritual assistant Wim Selderslaghs – which led Fimcap Europe in the past period and kept the familiar atmosphere that Fimcap is well known for. Thanks a lot.

I’m looking forward to meeting you somewhere at the next Fimcap activities.

Hope to see you there.

Jürgen Leuser,
President of Fimcap Europe

Vice-president [top]

Dear Fimcap friends,

At the end of an intense and fruitful Euroconference in Bratislava, the delegates of twelve European organisations elected me Vice-President of Fimcap Europe, giving me a responsibility, which I will take up and share with the newly elected President, Jürgen Leuser.

I am 31 years old and I come from a little town near the Lake Maggiore, in the North of Italy, where the tradition of very active parish recreation centres – in Italian “oratori” – is going back quite far in the past. Since I was a teenager I have been active in my oratory and parish.

This passion, together with a personal interest in intercultural matters, have brought me to the work of the Pastoral for Young People in the Diocese of Milan, FOM - the Foundation for the Milanese Oratories and FOI - Forum Oratori Italiani, the national coordinating organisation for Italian oratories.

I got to know Fimcap during the Seminar on intercultural learning in Malta, in spring 2004. Before that meeting, Fimcap was quite a strange name for me, almost fabulous, which still meant something important to the Diocese of Milan: actually, FOM had been quite an active member of Fimcap in the 1980s and had a Fimcap intercontinental President. A lot of people still remember the Euroforum 1989, together with several engaging intercultural experiences.

The seminar in Malta was a touching personal experience for me… and for FOI the beginning of a more intense cooperation with Fimcap.

We share common spiritual values, the educative care of the younger generations and also the challenge of helping them to learn how to live in a multicultural society, to try and make an intercultural one. That is why we also have to share our mutual commitment in teaching children to open their mind, to accept differences, to build bridges and to go beyond the differences. This begins during a few days spent together, during a Eurocontact, a Euroforum or a Roundabout… This is why I decided to devote the next three years to Fimcap Europe!

I would like to express my gratitude to the former Presidium, Corno De Mol and Doris Renggli, for the work and the intense commitment during the past three years. Thanks to their efforts (and to those of everybody who have actively experienced Fimcap life) Fimcap Europe has grown till what it is now, and has worked out a very good working plan for the next three years. It is now our duty to try and help to fulfil a lot of ideas and expectations organisations have expressed and we all would like to have them realised during this period.

I am looking forward to a good cooperation with the President, the European Chaplain, the Secretary General, the intercontinental Presidium and Chaplain and the members of the ICB.

I am also looking forward to meet a lot of youth leaders and European delegates during the next Fimcap events, I am sure we will experience many enjoyable and enriching intercultural moments!

Carla Acerbi,
Vice-president of Fimcap Europe

Are youth movement leaders better teachers? [top]

"Any youth movement leader, either Scouts or Chiro, has more practical experience than any other colleague who has never been active in a youth movement" says a Flemish school director.

Thousands of children go to weekly youth movement meetings. A team of enthusiastic youth leaders is taking care of them, entertaining, keeping them busy, motivating them and teaching them lots of things. “In a youth movement, I learn things I don’t learn at school”. It is always positive for schools when pupils are in youth movements because these are often class speakers, or representatives in school staff meetings.

Youth leaders know how to handle conflicts or behaviour problems. As a youth leader you are well-prepared to recognise problematic situations. You will find troublemakers in school as well as in a youth movements. If a youth leader is able to cope with problem situations in a youth movement, this success and experience makes him stronger and thus he will be able to handle things well in class too.

Youth leaders have fewer difficulties in their pedagogical training at the university. They are more able to work in groups, they lead works meetings or are writings the minutes. This is not because they are better than other students, but because these roles are obvious for them. Practical teaching training is also easier for them, because they are used to standing in front of a group of children. They are less nervous, can explain better and control much better their class. The times where teachers teach “ex cathedra” are nearly gone. Nowadays, pupils learn in a more active way, a bit like in youth movements where games and practical experiences are the basis for theoretical learning.

Former youth leaders are the most active teachers in schools, they organise open door days, school trips, sports events, etc. They make young people move!

Of course, there is also the danger of taking up voluntarily all leading tasks. However it is necessary to look for colleagues and partners to form a team. The teachers in charge of big activities are often former youth leaders because they have a lot of experience on that level. Moreover, their example and their commitment are communicable and encourage other teachers to do the same.

Excerpts from "Van Speelclub tot ideale leraar" Luc Daelemans.

Africa

News of CYO Ghana [top]

CYO Centre

With the donation from Belgium Chiro, some friends in Switzerland and our own reserve for activities, we were able to have the CYO centre re-roofed and repair a few other things to enable us carry out the National Council meeting and the jamboree at a school which charged us just accommodation for over 1,500 Crusaders for one week.

43rd national management Council meting:

The Ghana CYO has just finished a twin National Programme in August 2005. The programme was very hectic in all aspects but by the grace of God, it all went well and enhanced the image of the organisation. We wish to thank all our friends and benefactors in and out of Ghana for their support in diverse ways.

The first was the 43rd national CYO Management Council Meeting for four full days on the theme "We have come to worship Him". It was attended by over 60 delegates, National and diocesan officers including chaplains and Observers from Catholic Youth Council and Crusaders.

As usual, the main business was reports from the different secretariats, financial statements, budgets and programme for 2005-2006

These are some of the resolutions:

• Work hard to strengthen relationship between all members of the CYO and other Youth organisations or stakeholders.
• Develop ways of improving upon the Ghana CYO financial base, activities and quality membership drive.
• Encourage parents/guardians to give proper parental care and direction
• Encourage them to recognise the existence of the Child Right protection law in Ghana. Encourage every Ghanaian to observe it.
• Appeal to the Church to make more resources available for the effective and efficient promotion of the Youth Apostolate
• Appeal to the Government agencies in charge of Youth to provide and rehabilitate all youth recreational and office structures in Ghana for better integrated Youth Development in the Country.

Although the transport fares increased due to the new fuel price, all 18 dioceses in the country were represented at the meeting and after went together to the national Jamboree Celebration in Tema, the harbour city at about 50 km of Nsawam, to meet the diocesan delegations of about 100 Crusaders each, for the second national programme which lasted for six additional full days.

There was a variety of activities for three different age groups in the organisation, for both male and female. These activities were fun racing like thread the needle race, lime and spoon, filling the bottle; sack race, picking the fruits, athletics, table tennis, CYO uniform dressing and Bible Quiz.

Other activities were singing competition, excursions, educational and religious talks within a prayer rally and a final Eucharistic celebration. This was presided by the Apostolic Nuncio in Ghana, Most Rev. George Kocherry.

The 1,500 Crusaders from the different dioceses in Ghana who participated in this programme were very satisfied and returned home with happy memories.

News from Xaveri Congo [top]

Dear friends,

After numerous efforts we managed to get an Internet connection in our office. This is a new possibility for a better communication.

The Xaveri movement is doing well. I am happy to tell to all Fimcap friends that I have contacts with the Xaveri movement in Zambia and Tanzania.

A Xaveri Movement started in South Africa, thanks to a Xaveri leader from Bukavu. They have just been officially recognised by the South African Church; this enables them to function in a normal way. Now there are 8 countries with a Xaveri movement. Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

We went to visit Xaveri Groups in Kisangani ( 850 km) from Bukavu. The region has suffered a lot because of the war, but the young people are participating actively in a global development

In R.D. Congo, new Xaveri Groups are starting again in this period of stability, especially in the East region, mainly in universities and wish to have partnerships with groups from neighbouring countries (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, etc).

Gustave Lunjwire

Latin America

Jupach: A real commitment in building a new society. [top]

Nowadays, many people speak about the place of the human being in today's society. However, there is a big contradiction: reducing the human being to his economical and social value has favoured and cemented the basis of neo-liberal systems and structures without considering the human being in his holistic dimension that means to the image of God.

We must be seen as holistic persons who should control the economic structures, in search for happiness that is inherent in social justice and in the struggle against inequalities. Jupach's project is to recognise Jesus-Christ in the others.

Our task is to promote human dignity according to the message of the Gospel. The evangelization of our neighbourhood (Country, town, district, parish) is not completed if the pastoral and social life of people is not really linked with the Gospel. We have to stand up when we see injustices and inequalities. To commit oneself and take up the consequences of our apostolic mission, means working our whole life at the improvement of the economic, social, political and religious dimension.

The challenges we have to take up are gathered in this sentence: "What we want" and underline the consequences on all development levels of the human being and on all levels of social participation, especially when injustices and the hurtful gap between the rich and the poor people are ever-widening. Faithful to the message of our Brother Jesus Christ, we have to be open and creative to change our beloved Chile today.

Jaime A. Muñoz Mendoza ,
Jupach Chile

Growth and inequality [top]

The big debt of Chile and Latin America!

During these last 15 years Chile has known a satisfactory average economic growth of 5%. You cannot say that it is still a poor country. Presently Chile presents the following features: low risk country, low inflation rate, open for trading, structural surplus, excellent competitiveness, and one of the best rankings in economic freedom. There is some logic behind this. We have favoured "the quantity"and not "the way of doing". We didn't bother about the growth quality."
The paradox in the Latin-American countries is that the modernisation process is going on well, that means decent jobs and good health care. Quality school education is in progress in many countries of this continent, but not in all.
Newspapers and political speeches say that this successful model has reduced poverty to about 50%. We had 38.6 % poor people at the beginning of the 90's and 18.8% in 2003. This means that we "only" have 3 millions of poor people today.
If we have a closer look to these figures, we seen that poverty means earning about 84 dollars a month. Statistics are speaking of progress and figures but does this progress bring a quality of life?

Inequality versus opportunities

Chile is among other countries where inequality is still one of the biggest issues in terms of income, like in the poorest African countries. In the Northern Hemisphere and in Japan, the income gap between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% is about 5 to 6 times bigger. This shows that these countries have another construction - down upwards.
In Latin America, societies are built up downwards. Social groups are created, sometimes by the elite. In European countries and in Japan, it is the contrary the trade-unions form the political parties.
In Chile, the gap between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% is enormous. The rich people are 43 times richer or according to the World Bank and the UN development programme between 25 and 36 times richer.
In Chile inequality means poverty, the difference of income does not lie between 2000 and 100,000 dollars a month. In fact there are incomes of less than 200 dollars.
The inequality increased between 1990 and 2000. 5% of the poorest people increased their income with 1% and 5% of the richest people increased their income with 60% in 10 years.

The World Bank is talking of resources and opportunities for all on the market, also on the work market. One of these resources is school education.
In Chile, people on the employment market do not have the same chances. The upper social classes settle things among themselves. As they have a better school education, their income is higher. Political redistribution linked with empowerment is for the elite. The rich people are heading social and political institutions, school and training centres, private universities, means of communication and others. They determine expenses, investments, subventions, etc. They influence decisions depending on political power and finalising through governmental institutions, which again decide on expenses, subventions, etc. This is a vicious circle, renewing itself constantly with a specific culture.

Jaime A. Muñoz Mendoza

The Challenge of Cordoba [top]

Working for Peace and Social Justice in Latin America

Nippac and Jupach, representing Latin-American Fimcap took part in an important continental encounter. The inter-religious youth assembly initiated by the World Conference of Religions for Peace and the inter-religious committee for Peace of Córdoba.
On 4-6 November 2005 this assembly gathered more than 100 people committed in the inter-religious dialogue for Peace. The participants were young people from youth movements and institutions with different religious traditions from Latin American countries. Pastoral Youth of the Catholic Church, Focolare Movement, Latin-American Council of the Churches, International Community of Evangelical Youth, World-wide Assembly of Jewish students and World-wide Assembly of Islamic youth.

The objective of this assembly was to promote the co-operation between religious youth organisations of Latin America in order to strengthen the forms of collective mobilisation of the moral and social resources of the youth so as to be able to co-operate and find solutions to our society problems.
The themes proposed by the different religions were about the role of the religious youth for peace making and security for all; the social, political, economic, cultural and religious aspects of violence in Latin-America; the inter-religious action for conflict resolution, construction of peace, sustainable development, and answers to violence out of the perspective of the religious youth.

The participants at this international encounter prayed God to have a fruitful meeting and to help them to be bridges for communion and understanding, protagonists of reconciliation and promoters of values in the society.

On the 28 October 2005, there was a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the historical declaration of the Vatican Council II on the relation between the Catholic Church and the other religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. Judaism among others, well known under the name made out of the 2 first Latin words of the document: Nostra Aetate (Our Time).
During these 4 decades, there had been numerous encounters between the religions in order to eliminate centuries of prejudices, misunderstandings and mutual disrepute while launching a rich dialogue, mature and civilised which helped us to discover moral and spiritual values in the different religious traditions and encouraged us to put forward our numerous common values. This is a concrete example on how to construct a society based on respect and mutual love with dialogue as a fundamental tool to build the bridges of friendship.
The inter-religious dialogue is seen like a necessity, without loosing our own religious identity, avoiding syncretism and relativism. There is still a lot to do, but the work is worth continuing.

Maria Angélica Guerrero (Nippac) and Jaime A. Muñoz Mendoza (Jupach)

Europe

Euroconference [top]

Articlesubheader

From 17 to 20 November 2005 Fimcap Europe met in Bratislava, Slovakia for the European General Assembly, called Euroconference. We were happy to welcome 12 organisations (out of 14), but unfortunately not everybody was able to join the entire meeting. We were sorry to miss our two French speaking members: Patro from Belgium and our new member La Facel from France.

As outgoing Vice-President I enjoyed the atmosphere very much. Everybody was working hard, discussing with enthusiasm, putting forward new ideas and taking decisions carefully. The evenings and informal moments were full of interesting talks, relaxed chats and insights in eRko reality as well as a visit to the beautiful city centre of Bratislava.

The most important task of the Euroconference was to create an action plan for the coming three years. This plan will be the guidelines and working base for the new Presidium. An entire day was spent on its elaboration and many ideas were put forward. Then there were votes on the different topics. At the end, everything considered important was written down in a document with concrete tasks and aims. I am very happy about this plan. It gives a very clear and practical working base for the new Presidium. I want to thank everybody present for their creative, concentrated and intensive work.

There was another important topic which was discussed carefully: two proposals to change the rules of procedure. One of them wanted to remove the function of the Secretary of Fimcap Europe, because the position is often vacant. The second proposal was to change the electing system of the President and Vice-President. To avoid a loss of information when both stop together, they should not be elected in the same moment. After hard discussions the Euroconference decided with very narrow results, not to change the rules of procedure.

The final task was the election of the new Presidium. I am happy about the very good results of the election of Jürgen Leuser from KJG Germany as President and Carla Acerbi from FOI Italy as Vice-President. As outgoing Vice-President I want to mention that I trust in them very much and I am happy to see Fimcap Europe in good hands for the next three years.

I also want to express many thanks to everybody in the world whom I met during different Fimcap activities. It was great to meet so many interesting people. I wish you all a lot of energy in your work for the young people in the world!

Doris Renggli,
outgoing Vice-President of Fimcap Europe

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