In every activity of the project, a Common Social Discernment (CSD) approach will be utilised to benefit from the rich and diverse experience of communities and partners as well as to provide a space for the most vulnerable. These steps are similar to the Catholic Church’s Synodal process. The proposal developed here aims at engaging a similar approach in relation to issues pertinent to the common good with the view of also including relevant social actors, employers and workers organisations, other faith traditions and other organisations sharing similar values and purposes.

Indeed, the search for the common good presupposes collaboration between the various stakeholders. The proposed approach of Common Social Discernment (CSD) can be seen as the result of a convergence between the experiences of social dialogue, as practiced at the ILO, spiritual discernment, involving in particular a profound recognition of the human and spiritual experience of the players involved, inter-religious dialogues on the future of our societies and the search for a lasting peace sustained by fraternity, the evangelical practice of charity, which aims to promote aid and assistance that enable every man and woman to fulfil his or her own dignity, and lastly, the practice of social discernment, notably carried out by Catholic-Inspired Organisations, often summed up by the three words see-judge-act.

In this sense, discernment is a path, which invites participants to recognize that they are inspired and motivated by common values such as peace, justice, dignity, and solidarity, to agree on a common and shared diagnosis of the challenges encountered, particularly in joint reflection and action on environmental and social justice, and finally to propose shared concrete solutions. In such a process, participants will aim to adopt a common roadmap with common action while constantly re-evaluating progress on the journey and adapting to new challenges and opportunities.

The common social discernment approach together with the building of a global transformative community will enable the Church and its related organisations to play an important role in promoting “work as care” in a transition toward more socially and environmentally sustainable societies. The project will engage many actors from business and workers’ organisations, as well as the Church communities and organisations that include the most vulnerable. Experience and social practices will be shared so that they can be replicated and expanded.

It is on these foundations that the Project essentially proposes a way to give voice to the voiceless in the world of work, and, through them, to help promote integral human development, the only way to meet the demands of social and environmental justice, and of fair and responsible migration.