Fondation Internationale Cardijn

The International Cardijn Foundation (ICF) is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to serve the present and future generations of young workers throughout the world.

 

Officially created in September 1998 on the initiative of the International YCW, the ICF mission is to provide financial support to the projects implemented by young workers in order to improve their living and working conditions.

 

Throughout his life, Cardijn, who founded the International YCW in 1957, never ceased to disseminate his message that “Each young worker is worth more than all the gold in the world.” Convinced that this message is still true today, the ICF wants to help young people – apprentices or unemployed, domestic workers, workers in the informal economy, casual workers, those exploited in export-processing zones, those excluded from society – to carry out projects which will allow them to live with dignity.

 

For its functioning, the ICF relies on a team of volunteers who are involved in raising funds. Those funds come from donations by people or movements wishing to support a just cause: that of young workers. The capital is invested ethically and the interests are used to fund projects which are initiated by movements or groups of young workers who struggle to change their living and working conditions. Decent jobs, reasonable working hours, adequate salaries, weekly day-offs, the eradication of sexual and moral harassment, social protection for all … are the focus of the struggle to be carried out in a globalized world, where human beings often feel powerless when faced with walls of injustice.

 

By providing financial support to young workers’ projects, the ICF simply wants to contribute to building a society with more justice and a world with more solidarity.