This is an English summary of the LST movement.
››› For the full version, see the
website in French.
Luttes
Solidarités Travail
A movement that gathers the poorest together
with others in a struggle against what produces misery.
- Wallonia (Belgium) -
Struggles (Luttes)
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because our life is a struggle to survive and to escape misery;
our struggles will enable us to contribute eliminate extreme
poverty both
here and elsewhere. |
Solidarities (Solidarités)
: |
because it is together that we will help eliminate misery
and solidarity is the driving force of change. |
Work (Travail)
: |
because, to escape assistance, what we achieve together -concrete
solidarities and dialogue with decision-makers- is a work we
want to see acknowledged. |
Our charter expresses our basic choices :
- To restore solidarity among people,
- To work together in a mutual spirit of respect, justice and
sharing and at a pace that recognizes individuals' respective
personal life experiences.
Through different sorts of activities (meetings, workshops, street
libraries, newspapers, and a cooperative), we gather, discover and
share our lives, hopes, difficulties and responsibilities in the
struggle for a fairer society.
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LST is a resistance movement which, through the use of permanent
education, participates in the struggle against poverty. Since
the beginning of its creation, LST has been gathering the poorest families
and those sympathetic to their plight together, to participate in this
movement of solidarity.
LST is currently present in different areas of Wallonia
(Belgium), including Namur, Andenne, Ciney-Marche and Tubize.
These local associations gather around a common charter
and meet regularly. This gathering together is called the activists’
assembly.
LST is a pluralist and independent
movement.
- LST holds regular « Basement meetings »
: the name given to meetings amongst people who live in great
poverty and others from various backgrounds who want to participate
in joint solidarity. The name comes from the ATD Fourth World
movement, which has been the initiator of a similar kind of meeting
some 30 years ago. The ATD movement currently uses the expression « grassroots
university » for the same kind of meeting. Within
the LST movement, we kept the original word « basement »,
not only because the first gatherings took place more than 25 years
ago in basements, but also in order to remember that these meetings
constitute the foundations of the LST movement. Through these meetings,
we take up the gauntlet: to achieve the right to associate the poorest,
who are usually surrounded by divisions, distrust and contempt. Thus,
once every two weeks in the evening, we gather together to share what
we live, such as our struggles and projects. The « basement
meetings » are a place of expression and sharing,
where listening to and respecting each other are fundamental objectives.
These meetings have progressively given birth to the actions and activities
of the movement... and even to its name.
- LST is also a newspaper, Hand in Hand,
produced by fourth-world people and families with more than 1,000 copies
distributed regionally.
- LST is an open and welcome place for everyone and
has been situated in Namur since 1982, and in Andenne since 1992. It
has also been a mobile organization that organizes meetings in campgrounds
in the area of Ciney-Marche since 1996 and has a contact address in
Tubize.
- LST is a training project, that is putting people back to decent work.
In 1985 it led to the creation of the LST Cooperative,
a cooperative in the building sector that pursues the challenge set
as early as 1983, that is: « Through our labour,
we will escape dependence! ».
- LST is also the creation of gathering places to express oneself
and be creative, from the perspective of the poorest, including:
- a street library that, every Wednesday afternoon,
gathers children around books in the Balance district in Salzinnes
(Namur) and in the Peu d’Eau district in Andenne;
- the youth group in Namur and;
- weekly creative workshops in Andenne and Namur;
- LST's thematic workshops include
family and youth help, housing, training,
work and incomes, sustainable development,... among others.
- LST is a place to conduct political lobbying in
partnership with other associations, particularly through the follow-up
on the General Report on Poverty (at the national level). Activists
gather at LST to prepare the follow-up of these various meetings.
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