They are Alice, I am 22 years old and live in Chieri, a very lively town near Turin. I am a curious person who likes to discover, listen, read and have my eyes open to what surrounds me. I have always volunteered with my family since I was little, without ever really understanding what it meant to me. I used to have experiences where I got to know realities or people different from my everyday life, returning home with something that lit up inside me, a new warmth.

With ASCS I realized what that feeling was that filled me.

I started to hear the slogan “More bridges less walls” when I was in middle school. A boy from my town had been to a camp and had brought a testimony to the parish group I was a part of. A few years later, with some friends we decided to go to the “Io Ci Sto” camp, in Borgo Mezzanone.. We had no expectations, we also knew little about what we were going to learn about. I returned home with a lot of new awareness, which came with the force of a punch straight to the gut. The awareness gained was also anger, pain, helplessness. Feelings that could not be exhausted after those days.

So slowly I began to learn about the reality of ASCS present in Chieri, which includes many people who had shared the same feelings as me. I became involved in this beautiful reality, continuing to learn about human mobility around Italy between Oulx, Trieste and Agro Pontino. I started to participate in the project Pick Your Size, which brings the theme of migration into the classroom. Thanks to this activity, in March 2024, together with other volunteers, I took the class of a high school to learn about the reality of Oulx. It was a great opportunity to make very young and distant people experience that context in their daily lives. In July 2024, I left as a staff for the camp Through San Severo.. I was returning to the land that had left such deep marks on me a few years earlier. The contradictions and complexities of those places struck me again, and the lives of the people I encountered remained etched in my mind.

Right after that I decided to have a longer experience, to stay for a month in Trieste, a border place, the gateway from which people on the Balkan route enter Italy. Together with a friend of mine, Alessandra, we left. We wanted to know, to deepen what we already knew, but most of all to be in that place. We realized that our mere presence in that city, in that context that is often invisibilized, was important and meant something. The most beautiful and upsetting aspect, however, was the people. What is still etched in my eyes and in my heart are looks, words, faces. If I had to think of one word that could sum up my experiences with ASCS, it is definitely Stories.

Stories that scratch, that overwhelm and leave a mark. What has made me grow the most over the years is just that: getting to know the people that politics, newspapers talk about and about whom debates are constantly created. Meeting them and their stories, naming faces that often turn out to be invisible. ASCS made me realize what that warmth is that I get from coming back from each experience. It is an energy that is activated by people and what they can give. The most informal gatherings, the chats, the sharing of simple moments are the things that leave the greatest impression on me. They are moments when stories intertwine, meet coming from distant parts of the world and find the simplicity and purity of being together.

ASCS builds relationships that are based on reciprocity and on welcoming and being welcomed. That is why what stays most in my heart is the game of checkers with Nounke, the coffee offered by Assyma, a story from Mandeep or a glance from Lorena. Gathering this from others gives vitality and the desire to spend one’s energy on these experiences again. The happiness of realizing that you have shared a moment of serenity with someone is priceless.

While I was in Puglia this year, one person said a phrase that stuck with me. We had just been to the track, an informal settlement made up of shacks in which many seasonal laborers, often victims of labor exploitation, live. Coming back from that place a girl said she caught in their looks not a desire to be pitied, but she noticed a look that claimed the right to exist, to be seen as people.

ASCS is a bubble of vitality, a dimension full of freshness, a desire to get involved and not remain indifferent. It is a group of people who are different but united by the energy and desire to go out to meet, to welcome and recognize each other’s right to exist. And this leads to wanting to spend for a life that is not your own, but worth carrying the weight on your shoulders, a weight shared among Sara, Simone, Giuditta, Jonas, Giorgia, Silvia and all the people who dream of a world with more bridges and fewer walls.

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