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MOTIVES
READY FOR ANYTHING?

READY FOR ANYTHING?

Almost all of the volunteers and mentor families came from a Roman Catholic religious background, and the majority of them participated in the project for religious reasons.
Many people got involved in September 2015, after hearing Pope Francis’ remarks during the Angelus prayer of September 6, in which he called on parishes and religious communities to take in at least one refugee family:
"In 2015 we started saying to ourselves at parish council meetings: this is what the pope’s saying. Why are we ignoring what the Pope asked us to do?"
Other volunteers point to the Pope’s message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees in 2018, in which he said: “Our shared response may be articulated by four verbs: to welcome, to protect, to promote and to integrate.”
Others said they were open to taking in refugees through the Humanitarian Corridors because of their past involvement in Caritas Italiana’s 2017 project, “Protetto-rifugiato a casa mia” [protectee/refugee in my home].
One major element of my research was to see whether faith became the basis of the day-to-day relationship between volunteers and refugees, and if it made a difference as a way of getting to know one another, building interpersonal relationships, or as a tool for dealing with challenges like frustrated expectations or trouble relating to the other person.
The results were mixed. What became clear is that, in order for faith, as the motivator, to become solid enough to absorb the shock of the difficulties that arise it needs support to become a concrete experience in the daily lives of the volunteers and in their relationships with other volunteers, social workers, and refugees.
The words of two volunteers can best explain this transition. The first is talking here about how he changed early on through his participation in the Humanitarian Corridors:
I never did any volunteering. I was always 100% dedicated to my job, and then my family… [Now] I’m going through a huge amount of spiritual and charitable growth. When I used to go around R. [the city] and see migrants, [I had] great respect for them, but I was somewhat indifferent [too]. […] This service has caused me to grow so much, in the spiritual sense […] because I’m learning the true meaning of charity."
And the second explained the change that she wanted to experience on a daily basis through her relationship with the refugees:
"I am open to giving what I can, of my time and my abilities, only because I see enormous potential in the other person, who is the image of God. So, by being with them, I am better able to see and understand myself, too, and the world around me. It’s an enormous benefit for me to be able to spend time with them, even though it’s also tremendously difficult […]. I see it as a great opportunity for myself, to increase my humanity, to become more caring […], more engaged, more diligent, and to reveal the face of God to others.
Follow-up research highlighted that the practical difficulties and frustrations relating to human relationships forced many of the volunteers to test their religious motivations as the driving force of their volunteering in the medium-to long term phase of the project, particularly during the pandemic. A portion of them said that the Christian experience turned out to be an essential factor at trying times, because their faith helped them to resist giving up: “Solidarity works, but if there is not a faith dimension as well, at a certain point you say, ‘I’ve done everything possible, now you figure it out.” On the other hand, others said that not even faith could sustain them in the face of the problems that arose.
A small portion of the volunteers expressed non-religious motivations that were exclusively humanitarian or political. Still, even these volunteers assigned a positive value to religious faith, both as the reason behind the entire Humanitarian Corridors program and as a personal dimension for the participants:
"For me it’s not about faith, it’s because I see how thousands of migrants live, and they are not a danger to society. Still, religion plays a central role in integration – the mentor family for the Humanitarian Corridors is very Catholic and the migrants are also very religious – faith is a strong motivation for them in their daily life. And being Catholic also helps them integrate, because they attend Mass."

 

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