Young people from several dioceses and youth organizations, including the Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam and Leadership Like Jesus (LLJV), participated in the 2024 “Moving School” program to share and learn about “being a good Catholic and a good citizen at the same time” in the Vietnamese context.

The event, co-organized with LLJV, brought together more than 40 young adults from the Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City, as well as the dioceses of Ba Ria – Vung Tau, Dalat, and Dong Nai. Among them were two Sisters from the Ho Chi Minh community of the Korean Sisters of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and four Sisters from the Vietnamese Ursuline Sisters.

The event covered topics such as the neoliberal global economy and migrant worker issues, interreligious dialogue and interfaith cooperation for the common good, servant leadership, Laudato Si’ and integral ecology, and the 2023-24 Synod and lay participation. This year’s Moving School was held for the second time in four years, following the first in Ho Chi Minh City in 2020.

In his keynote lecture, Prof. Nguyen Duc Loc analyzed the current economic situation in Vietnam in the post-Covid19 era, focusing on neoliberalism and the issue of precarious workers, including gig workers. He explained that since Vietnam’s market opening in 1986, neoliberalism has driven a large number of precarious workers into short-term jobs with little job security, which has worsened after Covid19. According to him, as of 2022, the average wage of a worker is VND 8 million (about $320), of which they spend VND 7 million per month, and about 80 percent of migrant workers are in financial difficulties, with 33 percent of them having debts of eight times their average monthly salary.

Prior to the workshop, the participants were divided into three groups for a field trip to the Franciscan Center, Minh Lý Đạo temple and Từ Vân Shrine both of which belong to Cao Dai, Vietnam’s representative indigenous religion, in the Ho Chi Minh City. The Franciscan Center cares for more than 260 mentally and physically disabled people, as well as elderly unrelated patients, and has been operating with no city or government support, relying mainly on five workers and volunteers. The youth program participants participated in volunteer activities such as bathing, feeding, and cleaning the seriously ill patients.*