‘Family is the first team of our lives, the one that lays our foundations and provides us with the values that will be fundamental for our development’.
The world basketball star Pau Gasol posted this message on his networks on 15 May on the occasion of the International Day of Family.
At the same time, on 1st Avenue in New York, at the United Nations headquarters, a hundred experts, academics and policymakers were suggesting family-oriented policies and programmes to contribute to the well-being of households and their strengthening, bearing in mind that they are ‘the cornerstone of society’, a concept that was repeated over and over again in the various panels of experts.
The outlook is not encouraging, but that should not discourage us because the future of this planet lies in the attitudes and actions of each and every one of us. The focus is on realising that the institution of the family is also suffering; different factors are leading it to instability and that by being aware and making a good diagnosis, solutions can be found.
But there are many people doing many things to address this plight. We are facing demographic, economic, geopolitical, climatic, educational crises… Ignacio Socias of the International Federation for Family Development presented the mortality and fertility figures, which are worrying. At the same time, there are many institutions, think tanks and non-profit organisations that think globally and act locally to help hundreds of families, as Irwan Nadzif bin Mahpul, researcher at the Population and Family Research Division at the National Population Family Development Board, NPFDB, Malaysia, explained.
From the Philippines to Colorado, Hong Kong, Qatar, India, South Africa and Sweden to name but a few, it is encouraging to hear about the family projects that are emerging autonomously all over the world with interesting success rates, as the President of the European Large Families Confederation, ELFAC, Regina Maroncelli Florio, told us. Or the family that accompanied Prof. Rubén Anguiano from the University of Colorado, who runs a farm in Denver to train families to care for and work the land. Or the project that the Veneto Region embarked on years ago to deal with floods.
Also interesting are the projects that Generations United is working on to exploit the advantages of intergenerational relationships and the work of research institutes or faculty departments that invest time in research. It is important to be able to measure and evaluate what is happening, as was made clear in the examples regarding migration given by Prof. Bahira Trask from University of Delaware or Ahmed Aref, Planning and Content Manager at Doha International Family Institute, Susan Walker from University of Minnesota and Martin Bujard, Deputy Director of the Federal Institute for Population Research, Germany.
If you want to read more about what Mercedes Jaureguibeitia spoke about the Ethics of Care, you can find our paper here. Moreover, if you want to see the full document that Prof. Gamal Abdelmonem presented with our proposals resulting from the Experts Meeting we previously held in Nottingham in September 2023 ‘Home/Family and Climate Change’, this is the link.
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