My name is Alessandra, I am 21 years old, from Grugliasco and I study Intercultural Communication at the University of Turin. Volunteering came into my life as a child, thanks to a family who introduced me to it with care and passion. Growing up, Scouting allowed me to really understand what it means to give myself to others and what gratuitousness is.

ASCS came into my path only recently, but from the beginning I grasped its strength and importance.

My first experience with “More Bridges Less Walls” took me to the border of Oulx, a place that already I knew, to accompany the Border Schools team and offer help in the kitchen. I had the opportunity to come alongside teenagers who were entering the world of volunteering for the first time. It was in Oulx that I realized the enormous value of projects in schools and how lucky I was to be there for them at such a meaningful time.

This experience prompted me, in the summer of 2024, to leave for Puglia, to the “Through San Severo” camp. There I was deeply touched by stories, places and testimonies, by the contradiction of an extraordinarily beautiful land populated by generous people, but also marked by exploitation and trampled rights.

After Puglia, my desire for confrontation led me to Trieste for an intense month, during which I experienced the everyday life of those on the move in the complex context of the Trieste border, where people marked by the long journey of the Balkan route arrive.

When I think about what it means for me to serve I immediately think back to my Departure, one of the pivotal moments within the Scouting journey. During the ceremony I was called upon to make choices about the three themes that were considered fundamental, one of them being service itself.

Indeed, during the ceremony I testified that “Serving, for me, is a mutual exchange of experiences, feelings and experiences, it is communication and sharing a free space in which to be oneself.”

As I reread these lines, I relive the moments of service that inhabit my memory and fill my heart: back inside the “World Square” in Trieste, in which people from all over the globe, of different ages and for different reasons cohabit a place where people play, sing and eat. I return to the spiritual and physical care of Lorena and the altrə voluntarə who every night, even today, are still tending to the wounds that the Balkan route leaves on anyone who crosses it.

Return to testimonies in Apulia and evenings of games and music with the boys and girls of the don Bosco community. As I write, images appear to me of the smiles of understanding with Ibrahim as he pretends to steal my sunglasses and of Nunke’s dejected faces as we teach Italian – after all, I used to make the same expressions when Wasim was teaching me Arabic.

Through these experiences, I understood the value of reciprocity and human connection. Each moment brought me a little closer to the idea that a world in which there are “more bridges and fewer walls” is indeed possible.

Thank you to those who accompanied me and those I will still meet along the way.

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