I am Claudio Oroni, 45 years old, Roman, a bit of a poet, a bit of a dreamer, a bit of an artist, certainly enriched by a lifetime of encounters made of diversity and beauty.

My history with the Scalabrinian charism, however, began in 2001 during an experience with other young people in the Scalabrinian house in Loreto. It is there that I meet the first refugees and forced migrants (family units or single individuals) and find the first answers to the question: diversity=richness? Back home, a group of us young people start what would later become the first youth movement, within which there are young people from different ethnic backgrounds: Feet in Color.

I also begin to get to know several Scalabrinian fathers, and their mission stories bring me closer to the figure of the founder St. G. Baptist Scalabrini. One of them is Fr. Beniamino Rossi, founder 20 years ago of ASCS, with whom a friendship and mutual esteem was immediately established. Of him I remember every meeting, however brief, the immense culture and the desire to share it, the ability to mesmerize you with his stories of“migrant with migrants, ” the MS cigarettes, kept in his breast pocket, which he jokingly told his doctor, justified him from smoking given the name: MS = Scalabrinian Missionaries. And then one thing I will never forget is a phrase he addressed to me every time he saw me, “If I win the lottery leave what you are doing I will send you to Mozambique right away.” Reflecting on it today, perhaps it was his way of telling me that he saw me standing side by side with the migrants.

In life, however, until 2015 I did other things, work-wise, but I never abandoned Scalabrini’s charisma, I always felt it as a part of me, and a lot also helped me to be a part, since its inception, of the intercultural-artistic-recreational reality Scalamusic thanks to which the initial question is answered using the magic and immediacy of music and theater as universal languages carrying the message of equality, richness, and beauty of the other through the telling of past and present migration stories.

Then in 2015 began my adventure as an ASCS worker in Casa Scalabrini 634, in its infancy, three months before the first beneficiary Mohammed Dost entered the semiautonomy pathway. Today, it is more than 9 years of experience, of daily lived life, not just work, intertwined with the hundreds of stories of migration, reception, integration, awareness, opportunity and non-opportunity, stories of men, women and children “All united by one destiny: to migrate” (Scalabrini). It is in this richness of new, unique, enriching faces every day that I have discovered that being a migrant with migrants means above all understanding: needs that seem distant to us and making them participatory, the whys by giving concrete answers, distances and making them become bonds, the walls of prejudice to break them down and build bridges. I have understood over these years of meeting with students, associations, citizens, etc., the importance of being “Seed carried by the wind” and that the wealth in a society that has always been on the move is through sharing, exchange, closeness.

There are many faces I would like to thank, but one I cannot fail to mention: Emanuele Selleri. Since that January 4, 2001 in Loreto, you have become a brother with whom to share the journey, first with other young people like us dreamers of the “Dreams of Others” Cit., then from its gestation: the project “Scalabrini House 634” and now, that you are the executive director of ASCS, the dreams that are made concrete in the new frontier projects. In you I see that dream of Benjamin becoming concrete and becoming glue in an ASCS more and more shared and popularized soul. Thank you.

In conclusion to ASCS, in addition to wishing it well on its first 20 years, I wish it to always have a purposeful, humble and caring gaze like its founder, one that can make people fall in love with diversity.