Fundraising by Chiara

Dear friends, as some of you may know, this year I had the opportunity to spend three months working on the Operazione Colomba (Nonviolent Peace Corps of the Pope John XXIII Community) in Syria, alongside a people who, after nearly 15 years of forced confinement in refugee camps in neighboring countries, have returned to a country destroyed and ravaged by war.

Rubble is everywhere, both within and around people; the traumas are many and profound. There are still those who hope to find and see their loved ones again, and there are those who try not to lose hope in the future.

In my heart, the memory and longing for a different Syria—the whole and colorful one, the one before the regimes and the civil war, the one of minarets and jasmine.

And now I want to go back to stay there a little longer, alongside those people who have become friends, to share more moments in those living rooms with legs crossed, sipping tea and listening to stories.

Returning to the same place is important; it gives the feeling and conveys the message that a genuine bond has been formed and that perhaps we can begin to trust one another.

So I ask you, to the extent that you can, to support me in this fundraiser to support the volunteers of Operazione Colomba in Syria.

Donate if you can, whatever you can. Every small step brings us closer to the future we are building together.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.