The Economy of Communion (EoC), founded by Chiara Lubich in May 1991 in San Paolo Brazil, draws entrepreneurs, workers, directors, consumers, savers, citizens, scholars, economists, all committed, at various levels, in promoting a practice and an economic culture imprinted on communion, gratuity and reciprocity. Through their own example, they propose an alternative lifestyle to the dominant one within our capitalistic system.
In Concrete Terms, the EoC Invites us to:
- Live and spread a new civil and economic culture, from the youngest to the oldest among us, which Chiara Lubich called “The Culture of Giving”;
- To form new entrepreneurs and renew present ones who willingly share their profit to sustain the goals of the EoC: reduction of exclusion and its subsequent poverty, diffusion of the culture of giving and of communion, development of businesses and creation of new jobs; business people who can conceive and live their activity as a vocation and service for the common good, aiming at the excluded in every part of the world and every social context;
- To fight various forms of indigence, exclusion and poverty with a double inclusion: productive and communitarian; in fact, we are convinced because of our experience of the past twenty years, that no form of forced poverty can be cured without including the disadvantaged in living fraternal communities and, where possible, also in the workplace, within businesses: so that those who can, and should work, might have an opportunity, or otherwise run the risk of remaining forever indigent.
In order to make this project possible, The Economy of Communion is working on a vast project of education to the culture of giving, through schools, meetings, formative events geared to young people, workers, business people and citizens.
Lastly, in Chiara’s charismatic intuition (at San Paolo in 1991) a founding and fundamental place to develop and make the EoC visible are the industrial parks in the little cities of the Focolare Movement, of which they represent a vital and generative component.
So, from the first ‘Spartaco Lucarini’ Industrial Park born in Brazil, to the last ‘Giosi Guella’ Industrial Park, inaugurated in Portugal in 2010, the parks continue to feed the life of the EoC, an important role today, but destined to become ever more central in the near future