VEGA is one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
Italian acronym Vedere, Giudicare, Agire = SEE. JUDGE. ACT.
In July 2023, Young Lasallian Professionals from across the District of Eastern North America (DENA) gathered for a weeklong formation program at La Salle University in Philadelphia. The program included various speakers, a day of service, the formation of a community, and a deepening understanding of our founder St. John Baptist De La Salle, and the global Lasallian mission. Together and by association the VEGA program challenges its participants to become transformational agents of change.
Watch this video that summarizes the VEGA 2023 experience.
Becoming Transformational Agents
Lasallians United for Hope and Growth
The VEGA conference is an exciting gateway experience to becoming further committed as a Young Lasallian. VEGA aims to foster association for mission, as well as providing a space for young Lasallian educators to capture a sense of what it will take to keep Lasallian education in the 21st century vital and vibrant. The DENA Young Lasallian Professionals Council and the DENA Office for Mission and Ministry invite you to join us for a week-long in-person gathering focused on practical skills, formative and foundational Lasallian concepts, community building, and prayer.
Read This: 2022 Rooted in the Lasallian MissionObjectives for VEGA
As participants will be invited to consider how their vocational calling can connect with the VEGA call “to SEE, to JUDGE, and to ACT,” the key tenets of the gathering will be to:
- Support an authentic response to the Gospel and our Lasallian vocation
- Grow in knowledge and understanding of the Lasallian charism.
- Analyze our world with hearts of faith and eyes for justice.
- Provide a space for community building and networking.
Participants
When considering potential participants for VEGA, please keep the profile information below in mind.
- Young Lasallian Professionals (aged 22-35)
- participating in their first formal formational experience in the Lasallian world, and who possess an openness to growth
or - who have participated in previous formal formation experiences and would like to deepen their connection with the mission.
- participating in their first formal formational experience in the Lasallian world, and who possess an openness to growth
- Participants should exhibit a sense of commitment to the Lasallian mission and an openness to deepening that commitment
- Participants should also be open to serving as servant leaders and have the capacity to catalyze change within their ministry community.
- Participants should be actively involved or seeking to increase their involvement in the life of the ministry community
- Participants should commit to the entirety of the program
What is VEGA?
In response to the call of the Christian Brothers, and of its Superior General, Br. Alvaro Rodriguez Echeverria, FSC, to provide educative and formative experiences for Lasallian educators between 22 and 35 years old, the Young Lasallians VEGA workshop was created. This workshop further engages and encourages these young educators to be more deeply involved with Brothers’ mission of “a human and Christian education to the young, especially the poor.”
First held in the Christian Brothers’ Region of Europe and the Mediterranean (RELEM) in 2009 at the Generlate in Rome, and then in the Lasallian Region of North America (RELAN) in 2010 at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, TN VEGA continues to keep the enthusiastic energy of Lasallian education growing and going.
The Young Lasallians VEGA Workshop will not only educate, but will also invite Lasallian educators to take a deeper look at their vocations as teachers. It further asks them to discuss and work toward what it will take to keep Lasallian education in the 21st century vital and vibrant. Participants will be asked to take a deeper look at the roots of poverty in order to find structural solutions and for educating to justice.