Rome (Italy) InVolontario is a Blog born from a group of Volunteers of the Civil Service VIDES Entity working in the operational offices of the Roman Province of St. John Bosco (IRO) who chose to relate their experiences of life and of service rescheduled because of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The lockdown for the Coronavirus epidemic required young people engaged in the National Civil Service to reinvent themselves in other activities, which generated new experiences of personal and professional growth, such as that of Carlotta, who recounts in the Blog her commitment to teaching the Italian language to refugees and their families:
“There is a time of the present Covid-19 and there will be a time of the post Covid-19. The first seems barely remembered, it is a blurred time which we think of with nostalgia. The latter, however, is a question mark; we don’t know when it will arrive, we will probably live it without realizing it. The before and after, however, are times inextricably linked to the present, to the transformation that we are experiencing, to what is commonly called crisis. (…)
In the time of the present of the crisis, I am a volunteer of the Universal Civil Service and I have made a choice, the choice to help those who are less fortunate than I am with the means and knowledge at my disposal. The remodeling of my project made me discover many things. (…) Thanks to the help of Sister Loredana and Sister Maria Jose, and together with Viola, Noemi, and Agnese we are organizing ad hoc programs for boys and girls who need and want to learn our language. Our goal was to immediately be able to build a differentiated path for each of them, since they have different starting levels and different ages
It is an ambitious project, it is very complicated at a time like this to get in tune with the other; human contact is completely absent and the technological tools available are not many. The boys and girls have neither books nor computers, but only their cell phones and for this reason the lessons consist of video calls on WhatsApp. (…) At a time when inequalities are ever greater, where school is put on the back burner, we want to become not only teachers for them to learn from, but sisters to confide in and friends with whom they can find support for themselves. Our language is for them the tool with which they will be able to create relationships, find a job, live their life here among us.
This is the time of social distancing, but this does not mean that we cannot get closer, trying to reduce the gap that has always divided those who can and those who cannot, those who have more rights than others, who hve always known only crisis and never the opportunity that derives from it. With this project we hope that there will no longer be us and them, but an experience lived together, a common story; it will be our choice, the one we will remember in the time of post- Covid-19.”
InVolontario was conceived by young people as a place of virtual participation and aggregation to network ‘past, present, and future volunteers’ who, besides telling their experiences and journeys can find on the pages of the Blog advice on films, books, music, and of topics of the youth world.
