Being embankment in the tides

I am Valentina, I am 29 years old and I currently work at Casa Scalabrini 634, in Rome, as a reception worker and manager of the socio-legal support desk for migrant people.

I’ve been married to Emanuel for less than a year, and I don’t keep track of the dreams that still sit in my drawer because I’m terrible at math!

I met ASCS in 2016 in Borgo Mezzanone, where I volunteered every summer for four years. That meeting changed my life forever but, as happens with all the most important things, I didn’t realize it right away….

When I chose to participate in my first volunteer camp, I was a very young law student with a great sense of justice and desire for change. Encountering that reality, seemingly inhospitable and unfair that destroyed everything I knew, gave meaning and place back to things and, in a way, helped me find mine as well. It made me feel at home, in that arid sun-scorched land, where something nevertheless urges you to endure, and to walk again and again toward the good.

I can’t thank that place enough, for that encounter that was a spark in my life and for everything it made me find by tearing me apart.

When I think of these 8 very intense years with ASCS first I think of Fatma, and that night on a ferry taking us from Samos to Athens. I think of that night spent side by side, my tired eyes that nevertheless never took their eyes off her and her two very small children. That vigil, perhaps senseless, symbolizes for me the entire journey taken along the Balkan route, in which we questioned, condemned and forgave each other every day, with each step taken to bridge the senseless distance between our own and others’ lives. Witnesses of stories, of forgotten lives. I think of the privilege of having been able to touch them.

What do I wish ASCS for its 20th anniversary? To continue to walk together with people around the world who are moving in search of a new destiny. To continue to dream of a world in which everyone has a place to call home, be it departure or destination.

Scopri la Campagna Scintille di Sogni e accendi una luce di futuro, accoglienza e speranza per tutte le persone in movimento.

2024-04-09T11:19:15+02:00
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