“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value." That's the working motto of the Catholic Social Teaching and Financial Decision-Making Research Project, a grant-funded research initiative between the University of Salzburg’s Center for Ethics and Poverty Research and the Center for Social Concerns. The goal of the project is to understand the current budgeting and financial decision-making processes and procedures in representative Catholic institutions and to translate Catholic Social Teaching into budget-relevant points of reference. Center research associate Kelli Hickey joins us today to talk more about what motivated the research, how it was conducted, and what her team is learning.

"A meaningful life begins with meaningful work. There’s something truly transformative about the dignity found in meaningful work. Having a job can give an individual the means and the motivation to overcome past adversities, provide for loved ones, and achieve their dreams," Cincinnati Works. Luke Meyer, a sophomore accounting major at Notre Dame, joins us to talk about his Summer Service Learning Program (SSLP) in his hometown of Cincinnati, OH working for a non-profit called Cincinnati Works. Cincinnati Works assists with unemployment, but unlike a typical employment agency they form lifelong partnerships to not only prepare people for the workforce but to help them succeed and advance in the workforce. Luke shares his experience working with them and how the SSLP prepared him to truly encounter others and get the most out of his experience.

For more than ten years now the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures has partnered with the Center for Social Concerns to develop one of the most robust community-based learning (CBL) programs in language in the country. Today we’re joined by Elena Mangione-Lora, teaching professor in Spanish, and Clare Roach, immersion coordinator at Holy Cross School. Together they created a translation class at Holy Cross in South Bend that brought Notre Dame and Holy Cross students together around numerous translation projects that are now being picked up by dual language schools in Chicago and Los Angeles. Community-based learning has a way of developing expansive educational networks, and Elena describes how her CBL work led her to work with a school for men with special needs in Chile recently.

David Silberklang, Ph.D., is a senior historian at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem and the speaker at the center's annual Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture. In this episode, Silberklang shares stories from the Holocaust, looking at the importance of Jews' efforts to maintain human dignity and human life in the face of the overwhelming forces and impossible odds arrayed against them. 

What do labor unions and the Church have in common? For Clayton Sinyai, the answer to that question is a countercultural emphasis on solidarity. Sinyai is the executive director of the Catholic Labor Network, an association of Catholic union activists and clergy committed to Catholic Social Teaching on labor and work. In this episode, he discusses his experiences in a non-unionized workplace and the movement to connect churches with unions to promote the cause of workers.

Quinn McKenna is a Notre Dame junior who participated in the center's Global Living Learning Community (GLLC) during the summer of 2021. Following the cancellation of summer travel in 2021, the International Summer Service Learning Program (ISSLP) offered GLLC for students who needed to complete their global service-learning virtually. This program allowed ISSLP participants an opportunity to live in an intentional community in South Bend/Notre Dame, conduct virtual global service-learning projects, and engage in learning about global issues localized in South Bend and the region.

In this episode Quinn shares her GLLC experience, which she found to be one of the most surprising and rewarding experiences she's had at Notre Dame

Kevin Cassidy is the director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Office for the United States and Canada. The ILO brings the government, workers, and employers to the table to discuss the issues that surround the world of work and was founded with social justice at the core of its mission. That core of social justice manifests itself in decent work, or the security of one's job, being treated fairly, and having a voice in the workplace. We discuss the importance of a human centered approach to work which looks after the individual, the institutions, and how we push forward on making decent work available to all women and men around the world. Kevin shares how COVID-19 has impacted international employment and what recovery must entail if it's to be successful.

Madeline Owen is the newly selected Valedictorian of the University of Notre Dame's class of 2021 and is graduating with a neuroscience and behavior major and a poverty studies interdisciplinary minor. Madeline reflects on her experiences at the Center for Social Concerns over the past four years and how they've shaped her. During her undergraduate career she participated in an Urban Plunge in Washington D.C., the Spirituality of Justice Seminar at the Texas-Mexico border, and took numerous courses through the poverty studies interdisciplinary minor. Upon graduating Madeline plans to attend medical school and shares, "The opportunity to not just learn within the walls of the classroom but  beyond the walls of a classroom; to physically travel to places, talk to people, look them in the eyes, hear their stories was something that I was incredibly surprised by and an opportunity I just couldn't pass up. I couldn't see my academic journey being without that human element."

Kevin Hayes is the President of Catholics for Change in our Church and the founding principle of an architecture firm, the Hayes Design Group. In 2018 when the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing sex abuse in the Catholic Church was released, as a Pittsburgh native and lifelong Catholic, he was shaken. In reaction to that report a group of laity came together for a listening session and from that initial gathering came the framework for Catholics for Change in our Church. They coalesced around focus groups: support for abuse survivors and their families, financial transparency, addressing clericalism, strengthening and diversifying the clergy, pathways to lay leadership, and engaging and empowering youth. Their mission has now spread to 40+ groups around the United States and Canada who follow this model. In our conversation Kevin addresses the issue of clericalism in the Church and stresses the importance of listening to the marginalized voices in our community.

Rabbi Yonatan Neril is the Founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD). The ICSD reveals the connection between religion and ecology and mobilizes faith communities to act. They believe the ecological crisis is about how we live as spiritual beings in a physical reality and that the world's religions need to be fully on board in order to curb the impact of climate change. The scale of the ecological crisis becomes more severe each year, and with over 6 billion people in the world identifying with a religion there's a huge under-leveraged ability for humanity to turn the collective shift. Rabbi Yonatan shares that we can't just think about ourselves, we need to raise our spiritual level of awareness so that we care for other people and for other species.