Last week we had an interesting conversation with Giacomo Costa, SJ and Luis Arancibia social leaders of the Society of Jesus from Italy and Spain, two of the Jesuit provinces where the CoVid19 has had the greatest impact in its beginnings, with the intention of being able to compile and write down some of the lessons learned in case they might be useful for other countries where the pandemic is now arriving.
The first emphasis that emerges is the attention to the care of teams and organizations, which suffer the crisis in the first instance and without which we could not develop any kind of subsequent apostolic response. Some of the strategies would be:
- Prepare strategies for human resources, care, accompaniment and psychosocial attention of the social work personnel themselves.
- Attention to the care of the personnel, we also pass the crisis. It is confinement, not just teleworking. The people in our teams are also scared, restless, worried about the context and their personal and family realities.
- Preparation of essential telework elements such as internet connection, availability of technology and internal coordination and communication tools that favour the functionality of the dispersed organisation.
- Offering elements of meaning to the teams so that they feel personally and spiritually accompanied.
- Preparation of provincial solidarity funds, or clarity in the economic viability studies of the institutions in the medium term. liquidity. salaries. advice on possible employment regulation files.
- Helping teams to identify the important elements of what they are experiencing so that they do not forget it in the end.
- Provide a working group to prepare the reopening
- Treat the work issues of partners and employees fairly and carefully
- Pay particular attention to social workers who work in contact with people in a marginalised situation (prisoners, immigrants, drug addicts, homeless people…) during the period of coronavirus (protection, recognition, ecc…) Many of us think about health workers and less about them.
Another key dimension of the response of the Jesuit social sectors to the CoVid19 is based on the strengthening of the network for the possibility of support and sustenance as an apostolic body in the midst of a dynamic of fragmentation and isolation that certainly endangers the organizations if approached independently.
- To strengthen the sense of network, of belonging, of not being alone in each of the works. It is especially important for the directors not to feel isolated and abandoned at such a time: dialogues, times of encounter.
- To think of common projects at national and international level, so that there is coverage and relationships for possible emergency or recovery strategies at larger and more extensive agency levels than usual for the organization.
- Sharing management tools, remote work, response strategies, adapted solutions…
- Internal communication is key as a province and as a sector to nourish the sense of body and the dimension of identity and mission. As important as the response is to know how the province and the sector are responding. Do not minimize the importance of this dynamic that can feed synergies and open new possibilities to respond to a social need that we have never addressed together before.
The third recommendation focuses on the importance of accompanying and serving in new ways which is critical given the scale and characteristics of this unprecedented crisis.
- Work with the works to address the crisis in a comprehensive manner, each from its specificity and capabilities but open to new services with the different target populations. It is especially important to analyse what the emergency response means for each specific work and the possible new hybrid services between works.
- Another trend that has had a great impact is the creation of solidarity networks for the care of people who are alone or in need of help to survive in a situation of confinement.
- Many works find their contribution in the preparation of solutions for the provision of food and hygiene material to vulnerable populations who will lose their way of life in the first weeks of confinement. Sometimes the educational and pastoral infrastructures can be areas of access to many vulnerable populations through which it is possible to distribute food and basic accompaniment.
- Another line of work can be in the preparation of initiatives to tackle unemployment.
- Finally, it is becoming important to simplify access to our social services so that even though many of our organizations are closed by government order, we can be accessed by telephone or digitally to continue serving through accompaniment, legal advice or redirection to other active social services.
As a final intuition of this conversation, the need to reflect, communicate and influence at the same time as all the previous efforts are made, emerges strongly. One of the dangers of crises is not having space or time for reflection, which is necessary to also shape the adaptation of our apostolic work towards the future.
- Questioning our lifestyle (travel, communication, ways of collaboration…)
- To deepen what “solidarity” means from the experience that we are making and how this crisis is going to transform our way of conceiving social dynamics and aid relationships as well as the third sector in general.
- To communicate in every reflection an attitude of “concrete” hope and to deepen theologically the dimension of suffering and crisis from our faith.
- To update the understanding of the Laudato si and the clear links of this crisis with the socio-environmental crisis in the background.
These are some of the first ideas that come up in a conversation with the idea of being able to move them and transmit them as urgently as possible to the provinces that in these weeks are dealing with the arrival of the pandemic.
We thank other actors who are interested in completing this reflection with their own experience and contributions to write to us at [email protected] and we will complete this collective exercise of solidarity through the communication of learnings.
