LANDS OF SOLIDARITY

Creating projects that have positive impacts and mobilize communities has been one of the goals of Caritas Italiana’s pastoral work since it was founded.
Given that each diocesan Caritas branch implements the project independently, the creation of communities has played out differently in each location.
In one group of dioceses, nearly all of them located in places on the frontlines of “illegal” migration, it was initially hard to find volunteers. Later, expanding the community proved more complicated, too.
In another group of dioceses, the host communities were largely made up of persons who had been Caritas volunteers for a long time, with a small number of new members. These groups ran the risk of handling the accompaniment alone, depending only on their own internal resources and, consequently, tying the refugees to themselves. They did not have an ongoing relationship and support from the diocesan Caritas social workers.
A third group was characterized by more variety among the volunteers, some of whom had a great deal of experience and some of whom were new to Caritas projects. These dioceses found it easier to build relationships outside of the host community, as one volunteer described: “There were people who helped us totally unexpectedly. Sometimes all you need is a small spark to ignite others.” These “sparks” ignited relatives, friends, cosocial workers, and neighbors of the volunteers, and also the refugees themselves, people the volunteers met through other associations totally unrelated to the diocese, the families of the refugees’ children’s classmates, and so on. One volunteer explained:
"It seems to me that the projects you do with the Church… have a better capacity to listen to and dialogue with locals than the public sector does. What I think characterizes Caritas is its ability to listen to the local community – and it’s not just able to, it actually goes looking for that. By contrast the city not only never came to talk to us, but always treated us like a circle to be squared."
This positive spillover effect happened particularly in dioceses where diocesan social workers had prepared the volunteers prior to the refugees’ arrival, through meetings with Caritas Italiana social workers and external experts.
Most of the people involved came from within the pastoral community but […] the idea was really to interact with the local area, to involve people in a way that welcomed them and that was relevant for the local area and in dialogue with it."
As another volunteer put it:
"I think the essential thing is to have a community of inhabitants, too, in the place where the family is hosted."
Finally, an answer from a third interview communicates the final goal that many volunteers considered to be specific to the Humanitarian Corridors:
"If it doesn’t have repercussions for the local area – if it doesn’t change us, the people we host, and the area where we live, then we will have failed."
Therefore, as one social worker succinctly put it, the creation of community is bound up with the ultimate goals of the Humanitarian Corridors project, which is “almost more for the volunteers than for the beneficiaries, because the former group remains while it is uncertain what the latter one will do, and we need to live in a place that transforms and becomes welcoming.”