We welcome all of you on behalf of the sponsors of this event: The Path to Peace Foundation, Franciscans International, and the Vincentian Center at St. John’s University.
This is the fourth in a series entitled The Human Dignity of Women in Contemporary Society. Our previous side events were on Issues and Best Practices in Migration and Refugee Services, Addressing Violence against Women, and Economic Justice and the Empowerment of Women. Today we are here, in conjunction with the 53rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, to examine the special issue of Caregiving within Families, and will look especially at families dealing with care of persons infected with HIV/AIDS.
Caregiving is such an important issue to each and every one of us. We cannot separate “caregiving” from being Human. From the moment of our conception until the moment of the gentle closing of our eyes in death; another person’s touch will contribute to our humanity as we will contribute to the development of the other’s humanity. Caregiving is deeply imbedded in the tenets of the world’s major religions in the “Golden Rule”-- “do to others as you would have others do to you.” And the required practice of care of the poor and vulnerable, --especially care of the widows, orphans and aliens.
This issue of caregiving in families is as natural as a mother nursing her infant and a father rushing an injured child to appropriate medical care. Caregiving is as complex as global migration patterns (as we see Philippine nurses leave their homes and families to offer care in hospitals thousands of miles away.) and economic development as remittance flows from first to third world countries constitute a substantial portion of Gross National Products and count in the billions of dollars. It is also the scourge of international issues of trafficking and promoting just wages and conditions for domestic work. The arduousness of this issue is illustrated in the tasks of developing community based responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and appropriate care options for families suffering with AIDS.
To illustrate this point we offer the definition of caring from Joan Tronto's book, Moral Boundaries.
"On the most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair 'our world' so that we can live in it as well as possible. That would include our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web."
Caregiving involves engagement, reaching out to something other than our self, and is ongoing. For Tronto there are four phases of caring:
1. caring about (recognition that care is necessary);
2. taking care of (assuming some responsibility for the identified need and determining how to respond to it);
3. care-giving (the direct meeting of needs for care);
4. care-receiving (object of care will respond to the care received).
Today’s program’s objectives are outlined on your agenda, and I would like to review them at this point. In this program we will:
Examine concepts of human dignity, vulnerability, dependence and caregiving through the prism of Catholic Social Thought
Identify the key contemporary social, economic and legal issues that promote or inhibit caregiving in families
Describe current best practice to support parents as caregivers
Look at issues of interdependence and intergenerational caregiving in extended families and in child headed households.
Provide a forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience across nations and enhance communication among participants.
We will attempt in this session to address these objectives with three presentations by very accomplished and committed women. We will not offer a formal introduction although certainly each deserves one, in the interest of time. The credentials of each of our experts are outlined on the back of your program.
Our first presenter is Dr. Marilyn A. Martone, a moral theologian and professor at St. John’s University whose special areas of research are health care ethics and the distribution of health care resources to the poor. Dr. Martone will approach this topic from the perspective of Catholic Social Thought. She will examine three areas 1) human dignity and dependence; 2) the importance of caregiving to both men and women in contributing to virtuous living and human dignity and 3) issues of justice in the way caregiving is organized by society.
Our second panelist is Dr. Linda M. Sama, Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and a Professor of Management in the Tobin College of Business, SJU. She teaches and writes primarily in the areas of International Business, Strategic Management and Business Ethics, particularly examining global business ethics’ dilemmas in the new economy. Dr. Sama has the difficult task of examining the issue of caregiving from a macro perspective and looking at key contemporary social, economic and legal issues that promote or inhibit caregiving in families and reconcile the responsibilities of caregiving with responsibilities in the labor sector. She will offer some ideas on how to achieve the transformative change in developed and developing countries.
Our third panelist is Sr. Marie-Bernard Alima Mbalula. Sr. Marie-Bernard is the Executive Secretary of the Congolese Bishops Justice and Peace Commission and also serves in the same capacity for the regional Episcopal commission covering Rwanda, Burundi and the DR of Congo. Sister will look at current best practices to support families, parents as caregivers and to support inter-generational caregiving.
At the conclusion of the presentations we will welcome your questions and comments and hopefully fulfill our final objective of engaging all participants who have joined us today in sharing and exchanging knowledge and experience.
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Conclusion:
When people seek to truly understand their relationship with one another and with God in faith, they become powerful protectors of human dignity, promoters of family life and caregivers for the poor. The role of religion as a force for transformation through programs, such as described in this session--the work of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Congo and Global Micro Finance Program at St. Johns is vital and helps create a world in which our children and future generations will seek full citizenship.”
