Improving livelihoods through economic inclusion is key to achieving protection and sustainable solutions for the most vulnerable in our society, and ultimately achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Providing a path to purposeful work is the single most effective intervention to address chronic poverty and exclusion, uphold human rights and dignity, and offer real alternatives to forced migration.
As the global community seeks to rebuild after the shock of COVID-19, this requires a new coalition of innovative philanthropists, foundations and socially conscious businesses, social entrepreneurs, and faith actors. Catholic communities, particularly congregations of men and women inspired by Catholic Social Teaching and by Pope Francis’ visionary leadership, have been working on the front lines to foster social and economic empowerment of the most vulnerable and to build a fairer society and economy. To maximize their impact, GSF is working to break silos, foster inter-congregational efforts and create systemic and long-term partnership with businesses and other development actors at the global and local levels.
GSF is focusing on two workstreams over the period of 2020-2022:
As a starting point, we have focused on further empowering the work of the Catholic Church with migrants — offering them alternative opportunities, thus preventing forced migration and promoting their economic empowerment.
If your organization is active in this area, and you’d like to learn more about partnering with us, please contact us.
A global platform of six leading religious congregations has been formed with GSF support to share experiences and develop joint programs on job creation/placement for migrants. Participants include Salesian women and men, Scalabrini International Migration Network, Missionaries of Charity women, Ursuline women and Jesuit Refugee Services. The first action will be to assess the impact of COVID-19 on employment of migrants across Latin America and Africa.
At the local level, in Ethiopia GSF is supporting these congregations and other Catholic bodies such as the Socio-Pastoral Commission of the Addis Ababa diocese to create a pilot program enabling sustainable alternatives to migration. This network is connecting with private sector partners, creating virtual ‘hubs’ to train migrants for employment and entrepreneurship and place them in good jobs. The congregations place a special focus on the needs of women, in order to strengthen families’ economic resilience. Building on the Ethiopia experience, GSF will take this work to scale at the global level through the inter-congregational platform.
