The Solidarity Heart Day 2022/23 of ARCORES aims to promote the solidarity of the Augustinian Recollect family, lived from communion and unity.
Solidarity is lived with a peculiarity in the Augustinian Recollect charism: from the community and in community. On this idea is centered this year’s Solidarity Heart Day of the Augustinian Recollect International Solidarity Network ARCORES. With the motto ‘Together Transforming Life’, the solidarity network intends to celebrate the solidarity commitment of the Augustinian Recollect family lived in communion.
As every year, ARCORES launches the Solidarity Heart Day with the objective of celebrating, promoting and practicing solidarity in all the places where the Augustinian Recollect family is present. Parishes, educational centers and communities are invited to participate throughout the year 2023. For this purpose, different materials have been prepared for the work and dissemination of the campaign.
Changing the world in communion
The purpose of the Solidarity Heart Day 2022/23 is to strengthen and promote our solidarity, encouraging us to live it in communion. ARCORES wants to express and highlight the fact that communion is the hallmark of the social and solidarity commitment of the Augustinian Recollect Family. We need to live our solidarity in communion to find our strength and feel stronger; so that, being together, we feel one; to be faithful to our charism because “communion is the essence of our charismatic identity”, as indicated in the Life and Mission Project of the Order 2022.
Communion, through our projects, social initiatives and concrete actions, is transmitted to the people we accompany and help, so that they will discover that they are not alone, they will have us at their side, they will feel part of the ARCORES International Solidarity Network and will be able, in turn, to help others. If we live our solidarity in the key of communion, we will help them to find their way to a better present and future and to know what their contribution to the world is.
“Solidarity is being a presence of hope”
In his message for the Day of Solidarity Heart 2022/23, the Prior General, Miguel Angel Hernandez, delves into the true meaning of solidarity for the Augustinian Recollect family. Likewise, he warns that, in the face of all the hard situations of society, “we cannot fail to act and we have to do it together, as a family, in communion”.
The Prior General affirms that solidarity is “to feel as one’s own the pain of others, and to sympathize with the anguish of those who are having a hard time”, “to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice, to cry out the truth” and “to be a presence of hope in the midst of a world that does not allow it to flourish, nor offers us reasons to believe in it”. In this line, he indicates that the Augustinian Recollect family lives “has its own way of living solidarity: in communion”.
Solidarity Heart Day projects
The projects of the Solidarity Heart Day 2022/23 are four:
Solar Dream. This project, which is being implemented in the Philippines and Sierra Leone, aims to provide sustainable assistance to families displaced by natural and social disasters in remote communities by supplying solar home lighting kits.
Migrants. ARCORES Argentina assists migrants residing in Buenos Aires, who are cared for at the Nuestra Señora de la Consolación Parish. The objective is to help improve the socioeconomic and family situation of the migrants, since many of them live in precarious conditions, while seeking to generate some economic income.
United with Venezuela. ARCORES Venezuela launched the United with Venezuela program in August 2017. The commitment and the effort of communion of the Augustinian Recollect Family in Venezuela make possible, despite the enormous difficulties that the country is experiencing, the continuity of this huge program to help the needy population.
Support for students at risk of social exclusion. The project, developed in Guatemala and Venezuela, seeks to guarantee access to quality education and continuity in the educational system for children who, for economic or socially precarious reasons, are unable to continue their studies.
You can find more information about the campaign at arcores.org