Comundo

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Comundo ( spelling : COMUNDO , until 2017: Bethlehem Mission Immensee ) is a Swiss organization that promotes exchange and cooperation between people from different continents, cultures and religions. It wants to make a contribution to a more socially just world, it places specialists in partner organizations and promotes awareness of global interrelationships and the shared responsibility for acting with educational, information and awareness-raising activities in Switzerland.

activities

Comundo is an organization for personal development cooperation and is committed worldwide to the disadvantaged as well as holistic and sustainable development. It sends experts from Switzerland and Germany who are involved in projects of partner organizations in the countries of assignment. The focus is on the exchange of experience and knowledge. Specialists and local partner organizations meet at eye level and work together on site. This cooperation not only strengthens the local partner organizations, but also improves living conditions for the population groups involved in the process.

Around 100 volunteer specialists are currently active in development cooperation in 7 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia: in Bolivia , Kenya , Colombia , Nicaragua , Peru , the Philippines and Zambia .

Together with other organizations, Comundo also supports the corporate responsibility initiative .

In Switzerland, Comundo creates awareness of global interrelationships and sensitizes civil society and political decision-makers to responsible behavior. The organization has offices in Lucerne , Freiburg and Bellinzona . Comundo has been the sponsor of the RomeroHaus education center in Lucerne and publisher of the Wendekreis magazine since 2013 . In Italian-speaking Switzerland the magazine is called Cartabianca and in French-speaking Switzerland ComundoNews .

society

Comundo is organized as an association in which the supporting associations Bethlehem Mission Immensee (BMI) and Inter-Agire are equally represented as collective members. Dr. Beat Dietschy, former director of “Bread for All”, has been President of the Comundo Association since November 2016.

The sponsoring association BMI was founded in 2000. His work is based on a Christian self-image. The association consists of the Missionsgesellschaft Bethlehem (SMB) as a collective member and approx. 220 individual members. Until 2011, the individual members were not directly members of the association, but first a member of the association Partner Association Bethlehem (PaV), which in turn was a member of the Bethlehem Mission Immensee. The seat of the association BMI is in Immensee SZ.

The supporting association Inter-Agire was founded in 1980 under the name “Solidarietà Terzo Mondo” (STM).

The RomeroHaus Luzern

The RomeroHaus education and conference center was inaugurated in 1986. It is named after the Salvadoran liberation theologian and Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero , who was shot in 1980 on behalf of the military junta.

There are regular events on North-South topics . Educational modules are offered for school classes, confirmers, parish councils and other groups. In addition, the chapel, the meeting rooms and the guest rooms are also rented out.

Since July 2013, the house has also served as Comundo's headquarters and as a competence center for personal development cooperation, in which adult specialists and young interns prepare for their assignments in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Wendekreis magazine

Comundo publishes the Wendekreis magazine, which appears four times a year. In French-speaking Switzerland, the magazine is called ComundoNews , in Italian-speaking Cartabianca . The magazine was first published in 1896 under the name Bethlehem . In 1972 it was renamed the Wendekreis . The magazine has been published in Italian since 1898. A French edition was discontinued in 2005, but was later reintroduced.

history

The historical roots of Comundo lie in the Missionsgesellschaft Bethlehem (SMB), a Catholic society of apostolic life with priests and lay brothers . The society ran the “Gymnasium Bethlehem” in Immensee, also in order to secure its own offspring. This included the Progymnasien in Rebstein (1926 to 1973) and Freiburg (1938 to 1972). In 1995 the grammar school was transferred to a private foundation.

In 1924 the first missionaries were sent to the Republic of China . In 1938, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ) was added as an operational area, later Japan , Taiwan , Colombia , Haiti , Zambia , Tanzania , Peru , Ecuador , Kenya , the Philippines , Bolivia , Mozambique and Chad . A large chapel was built in Immensee in 1935, Mission House 1 in 1959 and Mission House 2 in 1973. The school buildings in Immensee were sold to the Immensee High School Foundation .

In 1998 the general chapter ("General Assembly") of the SMB decided to hand over responsibility for missionary activities to an association that is run jointly by lay people and members of the SMB. As a result, the “Bethlehem Mission Immensee” (BMI) association was founded in 2000 and has been operational since January 1, 2001. From 2009 the BMI cooperated with Inter-Agire, in 2012 these two merged with the French-speaking Swiss organization E-Changer.

From 1986 to 2013 the Mission Society Bethlehem operated the Romero House in Lucerne for the training and further education of its own staff and for the activation of missionary concerns. In 2013 Comundo (then under the name Bethlehem Mission Immensee) took over the Romero house and relocated its headquarters from Immensee to Lucerne.

In 2016, the sponsoring associations BMI and Inter-Agire on the one hand and the sponsoring association E-Changer on the other hand decided to terminate their cooperation at the end of 2016. The ideas regarding the development of the new organization were too far apart and a common denominator could not be found.

In November 2016, the Bethlehem Mission Immensee association was renamed Comundo. In the Comundo association, the Bethlehem Mission Immensee and Inter-Agire associations are equally represented as collective members.

Connection between SMB and Comundo

The Missionsgesellschaft Bethlehem (SMB) founded the Bethlehem Mission Immensee (BMI) (Comundo since 2016) in 2000 as an association with two collective members (Association Missionshaus Bethlehem and partner association Bethlehem). In this way, the equality of laypeople and clergy in planning, decision-making and carrying out the missionary mandate was taken into account. This resulted in 2011 under the same name Bethlehem Mission Immensee (BMI) an association of individual and collective members. In 2016 it was renamed Comundo. In the COMUNDO association, the Bethlehem Mission Immensee and Inter-Agire associations are now equally represented as collective members.

Today both organizations - the SMB and Comundo - co-exist and work for the common vision of a better, fairer world. Priests and brothers of the SMB, as well as volunteers from Comundo, live and work in the countries of the global south alongside people who are affected by poverty and discrimination.

Since the summer of 2012, the Superior General of the SMB, the President of the Missionshaus Bethlehem Association, the President of the Comundo Association and the Comundo manager have been meeting for regular discussions.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commercial register change: Renaming of Bethlehem Mission Immensee to COMUNDO ( memento from March 26, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), entry in the commercial register from March 3, 2017
  2. ↑ Comundo: Yes to the corporate responsibility initiative. Accessed August 21, 2020 .
  3. ↑ see entry in the Historical Lexicon of Switzerland