Just look at how far people are already travelling along different ways in a cooperative effort to build up the unity of our world. In keeping with their own opportunities and the needs around them, they’ve mended broken relationships, healed divisions, tackled the most grievous conflicts between individuals, groups or generations… Look at the daily wonders that are lived out with such commitment all around us.
Chiara Lubich, to the Genfest youth festival, 1990
This world of ours is deeply wounded by inequality, conflict, violence, natural disasters, corruption…
Pathways for a United World is a strategy aiming to address the local and global challenges facing our world by sparking personal and collective processes of change, opening up ways to build a more fraternal and sustainable world, a more united world.
How? By making fraternity and reciprocity the basis of every aspect of human life.
At the launch of Y4UW in 1985, Focolare Movement founder Chiara Lubich offered a strategy to reach the goal of a united world. Under the banner “Many ways for a united world”, she urged young people to pursue all possible ways to bring unity, through large and small scale initiatives aimed at renewing society from within, reviving love at its heart, as communicated in the Gospel.
This was the catalyst for action in a wide range of directions or “ways”, all leading towards the same goal: a more united world. It led to progress in a culture of giving, in welcoming others while respecting their diversity, in walking along the way of peace, of re-establishing unity between people and the natural environment, the way of respect for life and of promoting social harmony, etc.
Today
This strategy has inspired Pathways for a United World, a worldwide, six-year long journey proposing six paths towards building a more united world. Drawing from the challenges facing today’s world, the project focuses on a different aspect of human and social life each year — from the economy to politics, from justice to the arts, from intercultural dialogue to sports — sparking action, collaboration and projects based on fraternity and reciprocity, on a scale that ranges from the local to the global dimension, aiming to make an impact on both.
Our aim
To respond to the challenges of the world we live in by promoting best practices, processes, personal and collective initiatives — be they on a small or large scale, on a regular or one-off basis — which contribute to change, building a more fraternal and sustainable future.
Through Pathways for a United World, we would like to help achieve the Global Goals, the 17 Goals for Sustainable Development set by the United Nations to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and stop climate change by 2030.
How we achieve it
The Pathways strategy can be broken down in three steps:
LEARNstudy and be informed
We gather information on the topics that are the focus of the current Pathway and study them in relation to the challenges of the contemporary world. We establish a network with those studying or working in the same field in order to contribute to the development of a culture of communion.
ACTplay your part
We change the world starting from ourselves: we promote best practices, processes and initiatives of change, and then we take as many people as we can on board!
SHAREcreate a network
Let’s connect, let’s create public opinion. In order for local actions to acquire global relevance, it is fundamental to spread the word!
