Season’s Greetings

Dear friends,

As the leader charity for the expat community, we have an important role to play to empower citizens and lead the way to a real service revolution. Since our founding in December 2012, we have run hundreds of projects serving the homeless, the elderly, women and children in distress, and asylum seekers. With confinement, a lot of people have realised what really counts. It had a real impact on our workforce, with 60% more registered volunteers on STC platform since march 2020. We believe more than ever that many people doing small things together can make a big difference !

Social impact as part of our DNA
The poverty rate in Luxembourg is among the highest in the EU with a real problem with housing. For STC Lux, it all started with our Street Team and we are now able to provide a proper lunch pack to cover the needs of our friends living on the Street when they have no alternative. This year almost 1000 sandwiches and cups of coffee which have been distributed in Luxembourg. Also a good occasion to create bonds, project after projects, with people in need. Lately we have been keen in associating younger generations, the future of our society, in our different projects for instance working with elementary schools and creches to decorate our paper bags (Kids activities). Originally introduced for sanitary reasons, along with the mask distribution, the hands of children have turned it into real piece of art for special occasions throughout the year, warming the hearts of our friends facing difficulties.

Service and culture as key to integration
We know how diverse Luxembourg is, STC is a good illustration of it with its 1300 registered volunteers and 70 nationalities represented. Through our project and partner charities we would like to create meaningful opportunities for the expat community to step in and commit itself to the service of our neighbourhoods and cities. We also engage ourselves in the integration of the most vulnerable populations who left everything behind and at first can’t benefit from integration though work. That’s why we are involved in projects with asylum seekers in the shelters. We do that through our Movie nights, festive evenings leading to real cultural exchange through the seventh art. Also a good occasion to share and promote local traditions and practice languages. We obviously had to adapt the concept during the pandemic and launched our online Sproochtandem – language exchange to keep in touch with the community during the lockdown and beyond.

Protecting the environment is in our nature
The environment is now high on the agenda of many institutions but at STC we believe that this should be everyone’s business. Luxembourg hasn’t been spared by climate-related events recently. With a small squad of volunteers we have been acting to help the victims of the flood in Lux city and in the Moselle valley but our role is also to raise awareness on environmental issues. Since the Covid outbreak we have never seen so much trash in our cities, with among other things masks laying around. This year, more than a 100 volunteers have been involved in our environmental projects collecting and sorting thousands of litres of trash (Grouss Botz, World Cleanup Day). We are now developing with our Mini Botz, a task force to act all through the year in the different neighbourhoods and cities. In doing so we believe we can make a difference in our environment and inspire others around us for a more conscious and sustainable lifestyle.

2022 will be a turning point for our charity with the will to professionalize to some extent our organisation to better serve our community of volunteers, our partners and ultimately our friends in need. It will help implement our strategy for the year :

• continue the redevelopment of our indoor activities in the shelters;
• develop more sport related activities to engage more men into volunteering;
• launch new projects towards elderly people as we have all realised how difficult isolation could be.

May this new year be filled with humility, respect and compassion but also give us the courage to act and spread love and hope in our neighbourhoods. To realise our vision we know that we can count on your support. After all these months of confinement we need more than ever to restore social links between the different communities as well as to address the social and environmental crisis!