Nigel Pimlott, who is speaking at our forthcoming national conference, has just posted this timely blog on the notion of the ‘common good’ and what it might mean in our work with young people.

He begins,

The common good principle – if it is to stand any chance of being successful – needs to be both ‘common’ and ‘good’.Common in that it involves everybody and good because it necessitates personal circumstances, social conditions and prevailing ideologies that combine to improve people’s best interests, equally to the advantage of all. Whilst I acknowledge this might be simultaneously both stating the obvious and an over-simplistic interpretation of the challenges relating to the common good principle, it is, nonetheless, my starting point for this reflection. My reason for this is because these factors are at risk of being overlooked when it comes to the role, place, and space young people have in contemporary common good discourses.

He identifies five steps we might take in situating the ‘common good’ at the heart of our practice and concludes,

As a closing thought, I add that if we can involve young people in shaping the common good today, then it might be less of a struggle in trying to realise the common good tomorrow. If the common good can become the ‘new normal’ amongst young people then when they grow up to be adults they will have already seen, shaped and got into the habit of living out the principle in ways that are both common and good.

Read in full at Involving young people: both ‘common’ and ‘good’?