As the focolare spread throughout the globe, the community tried to meet the needs of its poor. But the needs often outweighed the resources.

In 1991 when Focolare’s founder, Chiara Lubich, visited the community in São Paulo, Brazil, she was touched by the ardent desire of many to have a more effective impact in addressing the social problems of their country.

As Lubich reflected with them, they began to see new possibilities. Why not start businesses—normal, for-profit businesses—which could augment employment possibilities and create profits? The profits could be divided in three equal parts: for direct aid for the poor, educational support and formation that could help foster a culture of giving, and the development of the businesses themselves.

Sixteen years later, 750 businesses follow the Economy of Communion model. Most are small and medium size, but some have more than 100 employees. They function in various sectors of production and service, and are located all over the world.

EoC businesses are authentic “laboratories” that can be studied and from which principles can be drawn. They commit themselves to following management principles that enable them to bring Gospel values to bear on their day-to-day decisions while working within market structures. Cornerstones of business operations include ethical relationships with the government and with labor unions.

The businesses foster communion with employees by particular attention to their health, well-being and development.
Constructive exchange with consumers and the public is achieved through concern for product safety and respect for the environment.

Following these guidelines, many of the business have not only survived, but have thrived.

EoC businesses also factor a new element in their calculations—God’s loving intervention, which often arrives in the form of unexpected clients, revenue or ideas for new products.

Another striking aspect of the EoC is the way everyone involved is given equal consideration. Those who receive help are not considered “assisted” or “beneficiaries.” Rather they are regarded as active participants in the project, all part of the same community, who also live the culture of giving.

The emphasis is not on philanthropy, but on communion.

It is ironic that right at the time when economic theorists are describing market relationships as horizontal and symmetrical rather than hierarchical, the modern business persists in its hierarchical model. In their governing structures and principles, many modern businesses are a remnant of a feudal society, certainly not in accord with the equality that the market brought and demanded.

The EoC system proposes that business place, as an organizing principle, reciprocity over hierarchy. To pose communion at the heart of the economic life of a business is to affirm a principle of “brotherhood” or of reciprocity as the foundation of the business management structure. First we are equal, and then we have different functions within the organization.

Published in Living City (June 2007), the Focolare Movement's monthly magazine of religion, dialogue and culture