The Youth for Peace have had summer destinations that are anything but trivial from Malawi to Athens to the outskirts of Europe's big cities, spending time with children, refugees and the poor, engaged in solidarity with no borders.
Greece
This is the third year that Youth for Peace have travelled to Athens for the Summer School with the children of the Schisto refugee camp. The camp hosts about a thousand people. It is in the middle of the countryside, poorly connected to the city, the refugees in it find it difficult to get out to work, isolation is a major problem.
Everyone lives locked in his or her place, small containers all alike, only going out to get food support about once a week.
More than a hundred children between the ages of 5 and 12 have enrolled in the Summer School
Every day," the Youth for Peace tell us, "some of us take about fifty children out of the camp, while the others stay at the camp. The children are enthusiastic about catching the bus in the morning to go to a parish in the north of Athens where we stay for daily activities. There we study English, paint, play games and have lunch together. Some days we explore the city. On the way back, the children fall asleep in the bus and it is nice, day after day, to see children from different backgrounds mingling and playing together regardless of language barriers. Afghans, Congolese, Kurds, Syrians and Somalis get to know each other and learn to make friends.
The camp does not offer many opportunities for the children, who often do not even go to school during the year, and this lack is evident particularly on the hottest days. All the families staying at the camp have been in Greece for a long time. we know families who have been there for three years now. There are also some who arrived in Greece five years ago and continue to be moved from one place to another every two years".
Malawi
In Balaka, a village in Malawi where Sant'Egidio has many active projects - DREAM, for the treatment and prevention of AIDS and other diseases; BRAVO, for civil registration; the Nutritional Centre that guarantees about 200 children a day a full meal - the Youth for Peace have given life to daily didactic activities (English language, basic school skills...), peace education, games and big parties, where the children find space to talk about important issues such as the future, peace, their dreams...
Many of these children live on the street, or have no parents, and besides food they need many things such as clothes, shoes, school supplies. Many are forced to work or do exhausting tasks, such as fetching water from wells, often many kilometres away from home.
Many have to walk long hours to reach the nutrition centre or the school, so they wake up very early to arrive in time for their morning appointment.
A group of high school students from Balaka joins the Youth for Peace from Rome every day to help with activities, but above all to spend a day of friendship. Several of them are former children from the nutritional centre, who feel the desire to return the affection they have received.
It is the same atmosphere in Mulanje prison where the young people visited and shared the experience of a Community of Sant'Egidio that - inside the prison - brings together inmates and prison guards. A dream that crosses the boundaries of injustice and prejudice, an encounter that transforms life of whoever lives it. "We brought all 420 detainees a gift - some bread and a kg of sugar; we prayed together with the Mulanje Community, then we had a party with songs, dances, skits and finally a bit of sport," the GxP tell us.
And in their hometowns
There is also plenty to do or those who have stayed in town: the poor do not go on holiday. and after the end of Summer Schools with hundreds of children from the suburbs, the GxP are regularly present at the Sant'Egidio canteen in Rome and in other places in Europe, where a lot of help is needed in welcoming people and serving meals.
