Caritas Australia bush regeneration day

The 7-9 August is Caritas Australia’s first Be More weekend. It is an opportunity for communities to spend time together being green, being just and being more. Caritas Australia chief executive officer JACK DE GROOT explains why this is a weekend away without the need to go anywhere.

Global poverty and weekends are not two things most people put together. Weekends are usually about escaping from the pressures of work, routine and the stress of the week.

There are few things more stressful than contemplating the fate of millions languishing in poverty. The news does not seem to be getting better.

A recently released progress report on the Millennium Development Goals, a fifteen year action plan to tackle poverty, shows this framework teetering on the brink of failure.

The 2009 MDG progress chart illustrates that while the world has made significant progress urgent attention is needed. In our own backyard of the Pacific without considerable attention none of the MDGs will be achieved.

Millions will suffer if this fails.

A day after this report came out Pope Benedict XVI latest encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in truth) was also released.

If the MDG report depicted the world as it is, Pope Benedict XVI invites us to envision what it could be.

Denouncing the scandal of global injustice, Pope Benedict XVI called for a human centered approach to development where the principles of subisidiarity (which promotes grass roots involvement in decision making and action) and solidarity are enacted to achieve the common good.

The consecutive release of these two documents is fortuitous: to see the world as it is, to imagine what it could be and then to pursue it in solidarity with the human family is a blueprint for social change.

And this is what the Be More weekend is about.

The weekend is the launch event of Caritas Australia’s Be More Challenge. Inspired by Oscar Romero’s call ‘not to have more, but to be more’, people create a profile and set challenges online about environmental and social justice.

As for the Be More weekend, on the 7-9 August Caritas Australia is inviting schools, parishes and communities to set time aside to take action that supports the environment, challenges injustice and makes us appreciate the many gifts in our lives.

It is a ‘weekend away’ not from a place but from the business as usual approach.

It is a time to reflect what things would be like if we were true stewards of creation, if we lived in solidarity with the poor and if we always attempted to be more in our daily lives.

The Be More Challenge is an invitation to a better world.

There are currently over 3700 people from across Australia registered for the first Be More Weekend! Help us to make that 5000 people by registering your family, workplace, school or parish community www.bemore.org.au/weekend and you will receive a resource kit filled with ideas of how you can ‘be just… be green… be more’.

For more information about the Be More Challenge call 1800 236 673.