This year’s Social Justice Week calls us to consider our part in seeing that our workplaces, our schools and our communities are fair places for all. We are challenged to see, hear, and experience the lived reality of people, naming what is happening and taking action.
Caritas is using this year’s theme of fairness to ask the hard questions of us all. Caritas Director, Julianne Hickey says “social justice is about ensuring that everyone gets a fair go. Whether that be in employment, housing, healthcare or education or in any other respect – we all deserve to be treated with human dignity and to have a fair opportunity to flourish”.
Resources distributed to parishes and schools offer litugical material, background information, curriculum links and helpful statistics.
The development of resources found in this year’s packs for Social Justice Week has been based around the theme of See-Judge-Act, a methodology founded on Catholic social teaching – it is a way of looking at a situation, analysing it, and taking action. It enables us to consider what is fair (or not) in our lives, our communities and in our society as a whole? Is everyone getting a fair go? How can we make sure they are?
We are reminded of St Mother Teresa’s words, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” (Excerpt, New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ 2019 Social Justice Week Statement)
Social Justice Week was first established by the New Zealand Catholic Bishops as a time to consider, reflect and take action on current social justice issues in the light of Catholic social teaching. Social Justice Week runs from 8 – 14 September 2019.