Ignatian Lay Volunteer Corps

Specialties

The Ignatian Volunteer Corps® (IVC) provides men and women, most age 50 or better, opportunities to serve others and to transform lives. IVC matches the talents of experienced Volunteers with the greatest social needs of our time.

IVC works in partnership with hundreds of community partner organizations. These nonprofit organizations provide Ignatian Volunteers with substantive work to serve individuals who have slipped through this country’s safety net. And hundreds of community organizations are on waiting lists to get an Ignatian Volunteer.

Volunteers are strengthened in their Christian faith by IVC’s unique spiritual reflection program, which is rooted in the Jesuit tradition of Ignatian spirituality. By contributing their leadership skills and life experience into service, IVC volunteers improve their communities and create a more just society.

History

Established in 1995.

In September 1995, two Jesuit priests, Jim Conro, y S.J. and Charlie Costello, S.J., gathered a small group of retired men and women to form the Ignatian Volunteer Corps (IVC), an organization that combines service to the poor with a unique process of spiritual reflection.

For Jim Conroy, S.J., the seeds for this initiative were sown when he was Novice Director at Wernersville, PA in the 1980′s and early 1990′s. For Charlie Costello, S.J., they were in his long experience working with Jesuit secondary school faculties across the country. They found that both teachers and parents of young Jesuits were seeking not only concrete ways of ministering to the poor, but also a spirituality in accordance with the vision of Vatican II.

Out of their experience came the realization of a shared vision: a program for retired women and men, age 50 and over, with two major components: ministry to the poor and reflection on that ministry.