Speaking at the Marian Shrine at Magalies on Saturday 21 March 2026, National President Vincent Williams urged young people to join the Society of St Vincent de Paul.
This is a transcript of his speech.
“I would like to thank the organizers of the Daswa Pilgrimage for inviting me to this important event and giving me the opportunity to speak to the young people here about the Society of St Vincent de Paul – or SSVP in short – and to hopefully recruit some of you to become members in your parishes.
“The Society of St Vincent de Paul is a worldwide organisation of lay Catholics who want to express their faith through service to the poor.
“It was started in France in 1833 by seven university students between the ages of 18 to 24 years, led by Frederic Ozaman. After the French Revolution, when many poor people were suffering, the students were challenged by their communities to explain what they were doing to help.
“The Society was brought to Cape Town in 1856 by a Scotsman, Alexander Wilmot. Today, SSVP has been established in more than 155 countries. In South Africa, we are present in 16 regions called Central Councils, about 240 parishes called conferences and have close to 4 000 registered members – of which about 300 are youth members – as well as auxiliary members and volunteers.
“Three years ago, when I was elected as the National President, one of my objectives was to grow youth membership in the country. After attending a meeting in Rome in 2023 and hearing that Brazil had more than 50 000 youth members, I decided that we needed to rejuvenate the Society in South Africa.
“The first thing I did was to appoint a National Youth President, Ofentse Mahasha, who is present here today, to start youth structures in the country. Some progress has been made in Gauteng (mainly Soweto), Mpumalanga, Northern KZN (Newcastle) and Northern Cape (Upington). More still needs to be done in the other 12 Central Councils.
“Through our membership of SACBC Department of Laity, I met the chairman of ACTS and in December 2025, had the opportunity to present at the ACTS AGM in this same place. The objective was to see if we can start conferences or branches at universities.
“I am glad to announce that we will be starting conferences at 6 universities this year and hope the number will grow before end of the year.
“My purpose today is to invite all the young people present to become members of the Society of St Vincent de Paul in your parishes so that you can live your faith by performing acts of charity.
How do you do that?
1. In parishes where there is a SSVP conference, go and meet with the members tell them that you would like to join. No one can refuse you membership.
2. In parishes where there is no St Vincent de Paul branch, speak to your priest and ask him if you can invite SSVP to come speak during Mass, so that we can start a branch or conference. We will gladly come and speak to members of the parish.
“We have met with a number of Bishops in the country to introduce SSVP and let them know of our objective to get youth involvement in the organisation, and all of them have welcomed our call.
“SSVP youth have exciting projects geared for young people. These include Mental and Health Awareness, Sanitary Towels and Toiletries drive, Family Fun days, Career awareness, Soup kitchens, Retreats, Back to School drive and currently a Wool collection drive which is a collaboration with Caritas and CWL and many more.
“My aim is to make sure that we have youth members at every conference or parish in South Africa by the end of my term of office.
“The church encourages us to care for the poor and I challenge everyone here to get involved. As SSVP members, we have our virtues that we live by – Simplicity, Gentleness, Selflessness, Humility and Zeal – and we encourage all members to know and understand them.
“People who are ego driven will not last in this Society.
“Depending on how our youth recruitment drive goes, we hope to have at least 1 500 to 2 000 members by end of my term. If everything goes well, we plan to have a SSVP Youth Convention maybe next year, hopefully at this same venue. We hope to invite our colleagues from other countries, especially Brazil, to attend.
“I hope everyone is as excited as I am about joining SSVP. If you are, you can contact me on ncpresident@ssvp.org.za or the youth president on ncyouth@ssvp.org.za. You can also visit our website www.ssvp.org.za where You’ll find a lot of information.
“Thank you very much for listening to me. I wish you a very successful and blessed pilgrimage and hope to hear from you soon.”