Co-passionate solidarity

-The future perspective-

Gracinete Lemos Schroeder, her husband Meinolf Schroeder and other friends of VAMOS! use their time on visiting trips to promote a new kind of solidarity in communities, schools and groups: A solidarity based on the right of all people to healthy and happy lives. A solidarity that requires relationship and companions. A solidarity as an obligation to stand up for the other. In the Brazilian, this is expressed by the word compaixão, perhaps best reproduced in English as “co-passionate”. Such a solidarity is the linchpin of partnership development cooperation.

“Those who get involved are able to experience things that can make us more human.” This was experienced not only by Meinolf Schroeder, but also by the interns who participated in the project work on site in Bacabal for six, twelve or 24 months through the “Missionary On Time” program of the archdiocese of Paderborn or on “Weltwärts”. And this Is also the experience of about 30 women and men from Germany who have been accompanied in recent years as part of study and encounter trips by Gracinete and Meinolf Schroeder in northeastern Brazil.

For the coming years, the possibilities of project funding and support for solidarity are to be expanded. To this end, an independent sponsoring association was founded in Brazil: Associacao dos Cidadaos e Cidadas Solidarios VAMOS! (Association of Solidarity Citizens VAMOS!), which could then contribute not only to the planning and implementation of social-pastoral development processes, but also to the implementation of encounter and exchange programs. With that, VAMOS! would come a little closer to the goal: To connect people, to facilitate exchange and dialogue-even across borders.

Let’s hit the road!

Another world is possible!