International Working Groups

In our previous post, as part of the recommendations for intersectoral work, we suggested that a commission or working group on the subject be sought out and discussed in the various sectoral coordination networks at both the conference and global levels. Some of you have written to us asking which are these international working groups that the sectoral networks are managing to articulate.

In dialogue with the networks of the secretariats, we have prepared this list in which you can see 17 working groups, commissions or networks that are working on the following topics:

Each of these groups is working within their sector networks, with the main objective of promoting intra-sector collaboration at a global level. However, it is interesting to note the confluence of various themes among networks:

1. Ecology. The three secretariats have workgroups on this issue: The Ignatian advocacy network of the Secretariat of Social Justice and Ecology (ecojesuit), the Secretariat for Secondary and Pre-Secondary Education’s Task Force on Caring for our common Home, and the environmental and economic justice group of Higher Education.

2. Migration and Refuge. Both the GIAN and the IAJU’s work team on Education for the Marginalized and Refugees

3. Global Citizenship. Again, two of the secretariats, the high school and the college, have task forces focused on global citizenship or civic-political leadership.

It is curious, because in our global survey of collaboration in 2017, we had detected that the themes that most help collaboration include peace and reconciliation, education, social issues (human rights, migrants and refugees, solidarity, marginalization) and youth.

These confluences could point the direction of future global intersectoral collaborations. Everything seems to point out that in ecology, forced migration and global citizenship we could be finding the great themes for international collaboration in the coming years, on the other hand perfectly aligned with the Universal Apostolic Preferences.