Good morning friends.
Thank you [Chairperson] Lucy [Franks]. Thanks to you and the board for all your support and investment in shaping this plan. A little part of me can’t help thinking – It’s so good to be here. Today marks a milestone in a long but very rewarding process.
Thank you to all of you have who have come here this morning. We are so glad you are here. This is a special day in the life of Misean Cara.
Responding resolutely to a world in great need
Friends our world is in great and painful need. Just think about it. Imagine all the people you hold dear in your lives, your families, your children, your friends, your clubs, your communities.
- 120 million children out of school that’s 24 times the population of Ireland
- 6 million children die each year before their 5th birthday that’s more than all the people of Ireland
- 780 million people go to bed hungry each day that’s more than 150 times all the people of Ireland
- There are 60 million refugees and displaced people in the world today more than since world war II.
On Monday this week, we were shocked by events in Manchester. Who would not be moved to tears by such a callous contempt for life? We wonder here – as many others have to in faraway places every day – how to make sense of such events and of such numbers. More importantly, how are we to respond to such a world?
Launching our new Strategy
Friends, it is, however, into this broken world that we want to launch our new Strategy.
Faced with the scale of the challenges the world faces it is daunting.
Does what we have in mind contribute to the work needed to effectively address these challenges?
If we commit as communities of people to creating change, will large waves and storms sink us?
Strength from the Missionary journey
We do not underestimate the challenges. But to develop this strategy we have taken time to connect with and understand our members in a worldwide conversation. We have come to appreciate the extraordinary potential of the international missionary movement. From this three things stand out which ground our confidence that together we can address and tackle the greatest challenges:
1. Strengthened by the idea of justice
One of the most striking things about missionaries is that they are united and driven by an idea of justice. Missionaries work in an incredible array of projects, doing all sorts of things. They are scattered over a vast spread of countries.
But wherever we go we find missionaries with a vital awareness of what is due to the people they live with. We find this commitment underlying all areas of their work. Missionaries do not seek support out of pity. They seek it because they believe it is owed to marginalised communities and the people they take into their hearts. They seek it not to be able to count their achievements, but because each person and community counts for them, and in many ways on them.
To better reflect this deep missionary commitment and strength our new strategy reframes our core goals in terms of rights. Together we will focus on:
Goal 1: Uphold the Right to Quality Education
Goal 2: Uphold the Right to Better Health, Clean Water and Sanitation
Goal 3: Uphold the Right to Sustainable Livelihoods
Goal 4: Uphold and Advocate for Human Rights
Somewhat prophetically, a google search turns up the following definition of ‘uphold’: ‘confirm or support (something which has been questioned)’. Yes, we live in a time when these realities are being questioned. But the more they are questioned, the stronger is our resolve to fight for each of these rights. To do this, we will build on the networks and advocacy work missionaries and their communities have already created, working at local, national and global level.
And one other thing: our members are in an ideal position to respond to emergencies when they arise. Because of the close relationship and trust established with communities over many years of engagement, and with a physical presence at the heart of those communities, missionaries are ideally placed to respond, immediately and locally to humanitarian crisis.
2. Strengthened by the idea of an international identity
A second thing that strikes us about missionaries is that they are not limited or shrunken in their humanity by borders.
Their lives, their homes, their communities break down walls that many societies often want to build between communities.
They do not accept that national boundaries – lines drawn on paper maps – should set the boundaries of their compassion. They can and do leave ‘their own’. They put better futures for other people and communities first. They commit to welcoming the stranger.
To reflect this deep commitment common to all missionaries we identify our fifth strategic goal as:
Goal 5: Enhance and Promote the Missionary Approach to Development
Many parts of the world are trapped in the false pursuit of nationalist solutions to life’s challenges. Missionaries find their identity at a deeper level where all people – regardless of birth place or faith – are recognised as brothers and sisters in one common human family. We will work with our members to more effectively promote the practical wisdom, learning and initiatives that such a long term internationalist commitment entails. Centuries of reaching out the hand of friendship – educates us in addressing problems that can only be solved with a renewed vision of international interdependence.
3. The idea of implementing the best we can
A third thing that is striking about missionaries is that they are implementers. Missionaries roll up their sleeves. While others may spend much of their time talking, and planning, and monitoring and auditing, missionaries get up each day and create change with the communities they work with. We see that they make extraordinary projects happen. They take on the risks of getting started. They get involved.
They focus intensely on doing what can best be done today. They are first responders in emergency situations. They start new things. They go where others don’t go. They stay when others leave. They do lots of heavy lifting, setting up organisations that last and delivering quality over time.
As an organisation, we take our inspiration from these missionaries who in the face of enormous challenges create change with their communities each day. And so we have identified four critical success factors to ensure we in Misean Cara do our very best.
1. Enhance organisational excellence
2. Maximising resource potential
3. Strengthening our learning culture
4. Inspiring global citizens
Inspired by their daily commitment to making tomorrow better than yesterday, we will commit to being the best organisation we can be.
How does a girl from Guatemala become inspired by the work of Irish Missionaries?
That’s a long story for another day. But it all started for me with the fight for justice in my home country; with the harsh reality that keeping safe and continuing that fight meant crossing borders and starting over. But still with a strong resolve and commitment to action. That’s why my heart has been captured by this missionary movement. Why I value the opportunity I have been given these last three years as CEO of Misean Cara. And why this strategy resonates so strongly with where I came from and my hopes for the future.
Never has there been a greater need of tolerance, compassion and solidarity with people who have lost everything.
Friends, yes it is human to wonder about the impact of our actions. To wonder about our willingness to change what we need to change and our chances of success.
But let us take hope from what we are doing here today.
Let us remember not what we can’t do, but rather what we can.
Let us remember the power we have together.
Let us remember the power that we have within us.
If we can commit to implementing the best we can each day.
If we hang onto our idea of justice, and the determination to see the world shaped by justice.
If we live as international citizens of the world.
Then we can be sure that with God’s power working in us we can do ‘infinitely more than we can ask or imagine’.
We are determined to do all we can, and more.
Join us.
Let’s do it together!
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