I am Simone, I am 25 years old and live in Chieri, near Turin. I’ve been a Scout all my life, my favorite mode of transportation is my bicycle, I’m passionate about mountains, forests and vegetable gardens, but trains also have a special fascination, like so many other curious things in the world and in everyday life. I studied humanities in college and now, after a stint as a volunteer in Brazil, I am working in the area of human mobility and advocacy.

I learned about ASCS through word of mouth from many young people in my town who over the years participated in the then Camp Io Ci Sto with seasonal workers in Borgo Mezzanone, Foggia. I first participated the summer of fifth grade, returned the following summer, and from there off on a thousand other adventures, at first with friends and girlfriends from Chieri, with whom we did and did until we convinced the association to open a branch in Chieri! Activities with ASCS and the Scalabrinians took me along the Balkan route and then with the “Through” summer camps to learn about borders and experiences of reception and rejections throughout Italy.

When I first left, I had in my backpack many readings, questions, thoughts on the topic of migration, which had fascinated me: What impressed me the most was the meeting. For the first time that summer I met the “migrant,” the “refugee” in person: faces and stories behind words, categories and stereotypes, Humanity and encounters are what I carry with me from so many experiences I have had.

Among the most significant encounters I remember the one with Shoaib: we were traveling along the Balkan route and we were at a remote spot in the middle of the Bosnian countryside, where near a small police checkpoint there was a small group of people in transit who had been let off the bus. There, in that clay pitch, that young Pakistani explained to us what it meant to feel like a pawn or a ball in the hands of a game made by others in their own skin: the game.

I wish that, as it has been for us, ASCS can continue to be a welcoming family, a space of trust, an incubator of dreams, activating young people to build together a world with more bridges and fewer walls.