The CREATE “Toolbox”

The 2025 “Toolbox” students reflect on their Projects and their Experience

Helen Alford OP

For the past four years, the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Pontifical University of St Thomas (Angelicum) has run a programme called CREATE, an acronym for: Catholic social teaching Rome Exchange: Advanced Training Experience. The overall programme, which is aimed at young people from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), has the following goals:

That the Christian tradition may become a greater force for inclusion and social innovation in Europe, especially in the CEE region, by means of a wider and deeper knowledge of Catholic social thought and, in particular, through developing public intellectuals.
That the countries of the CEE should grow in solidarity, so as to create a stronger regional identity.

Within the CREATE programme, one of the activities, called “Toolbox”, provides 6 students with full scholarships for a semester of courses in Catholic Social Teaching and related disciplines. When they apply, they have to show that they are working on a thesis or on another kind of project that would be helped by studying the courses offered in the Toolbox programme.

At the end of the semester, the students are required to write a minimum of one page about how the programme has helped them advance their project, to which, if they find it helpful, they are able to add more general reflections about their experience in Rome and in the programme. The 6 texts that follow are these reflections by the students in the Toolbox programme.