I got to know ASCS somewhat by chance at the end of my undergraduate studies. I was looking for an association that would give the opportunity to experience international cooperation firsthand and give me experience abroad.

I found Emanuele and Father Beniamino to welcome me, to introduce me to the association to open up the world to me about what it means to go to another country … and so I left with a university classmate, and more importantly a travel companion, for Haiti, it was 2012!

But Haiti has stayed with me with its colors, smells, enthusiasms and fears, confusion and plans.

When I returned, I could not give up the idea of leaving again, of trying a new experience that would give me a chance to stay longer and enter more into the life of the country that would welcome me.

So with Simone, my current husband, we started looking for a project that could give us a mission experience.

ASCS surprised us once again and involved us in a project that Father Benjamin had been writing for a while and in which ASCS believed.

We were proposed to go to Haiti again, for one year to follow the project of a community center near the Scalabrinian mission in Port-au-Prince.

It was July 2013 when we set foot in Haiti for an initial survey and to acquaint Simone with the country…when the sweltering heat enveloped us and the smell of burning entered our nostrils our first reaction was “but who made us do it?!”

But despite the heat, the mosquitoes, the potholed roads, and the very wary Haitians, 2014 arrived and we were off!

It has been a journey, it has been a journey of growth, of projects, of defeats, of difficulties, of joys, of meetings, of exchanges, of new looks at life…

Haiti was all of that and maybe something more that even today years later I can’t really explain, but it’s something that stays inside and you can’t get off.

We started out loaded with plans and goals and found ourselves taking them apart piece by piece and slowly rebuilding them. We found that our doing had to first meet people’s thoughts and points of view.

Meeting and exchanging with Haitians made us change perspectives, revise priorities, and shape the way we do things. Encountering the other always changes you … led us to question ourselves.

Gaining trust was hard and in this knowing the language allowed us to be less “moun blan,” meaning white person, foreign person.

The “Kay Beniamino” community center was slowly born as slowly as we were reborn. We tried to sow small seeds to give new perspectives, especially to young people, with respect to engagement in a community, in a project. Unfortunately, the precariousness of life in Haiti makes everything very difficult.

There would be enormous potential on the human and material level, but when a person lacks the guarantee of basic goods in everyday life any other perspective falls by the wayside.

The hope and wish is that the exchange that took place and the meeting and experiences may have provided insights to dream a somewhat different future, new looks with which to look at reality. So has it been for us.

I’m Federica, I’m a mom of 3 girls, I’m a wife, I’m a teacher of Italian to foreigners, and I’m a woman who carries a little baggage of Haitian life that no one can ever take away from me and that gave me the opportunity to feel foreign, lost, without reference points, without understanding a word. And I treasure all of this every day when I meet foreigners who come looking for an Italian course, for a foothold so that they can start over with their lives here.

ASCS was a beautiful starting point for my life, I think it made me great, and I always look back to her with affection and extreme admiration for what she continues to do here and in the world.

My wish is that it can always be a promoter of beautiful and important projects, a food for thought on the reality of migration in Italy and in the world, a place for meeting and exchange of people carrying multiple cultures.

I hope that many other young people will have the opportunity to meet her and experience formation and life as it was for me.