Hanging backpack

At the Arsenale della Pace the bell on the first day of school seems to ring earlier. As early as mid-July, mothers begin to crowd the Arsenale switchboard, asking their children for the backpack with the material to go to school. Day after day they are more and more, word of mouth spreads in the neighborhood, the neighbor, the cousin, the friend, all come to prepare for the start of school. They are large families with two, three children, sometimes even more and school material becomes a very precious asset. In this time of pandemic the situation, already precarious for a good part of the families living in the Porta Palazzo district, has worsened. The reduction of work, the not always being able to access forms of social safety nets have meant that even those nuclei, which previously barely managed to make it to the end of the month, now no longer make it. So you have to give yourself priorities, reorganize the family economy… and the door to the Arsenale della Pace is always open… even in July and August !!!

In stock there is a small supply of backpacks, notebooks, pens, colors, but it is not enough to respond to requests. So, green light to the imagination to look for ways to involve more and more people, near and far, in collecting school materials.
Some young volunteers who regularly attend the Arsenale decide to knock on stationery at the stationery, asking for some donations and the possibility of putting a basket in which whoever wants can put something they buy for the children of Porta Palazzo.

Several stationeries adhere to Turin, but also to Chieri, Genoa, Vicenza, Brescia… We also ask our friend who always spends himself on organizing collections in supermarkets, to find contacts to make some ad hoc for the school. As always, he accepts the challenge and in a few days he organizes two in Turin and one in Milan, but at the end of August after returning from holidays.

And in the meantime, how to do it? Appeals to volunteers, friends, young people who come to the Arsenal. 35 boys from Turin, aged 15 to 20, take it upon themselves to come every day in turn to prepare the backpacks, as other volunteers talk to the families and take note of the material needed for each child. They are also helped by young people from all over Italy who participate in the experiences of service and sharing from week to week.
They try to identify with the future recipient and prepare the backpack, the notebooks, the case making the combinations of colors, drawings, comic characters, as if they were choosing the material for themselves. Some of them on Wednesdays and Saturdays deliver backpacks ready to the children accompanied by their mothers and the joy of the faces of these children, the pride with which they put the backpack on their shoulders are contagious and repay the effort made.

Many young people, returning home, tell about this experience and together with their friends they choose to collect material also in their areas ... and so the couriers, at different times of the day, begin to ring at the door of the Arsenale: one day a package, the next two and so on, more and more.

One day, archiving the press review, I read: Hanging backpack for children of the Arsenale della Pace.
I read with curiosity, but I cannot understand the source of this initiative organized in two countries of the Turin belt.
I ask a few questions and we discover that two teenagers, who came to visit the Arsenale, crossing the smiles of the children with the new backpack, returned home and said to themselves: «We too want to make many children smile!». A few phone calls to friends and in a few days they involve different local realities and invite everyone to bring stationery! A lady rings the bell of the Arsenale: she is a catechist of a parish who accidentally heard the appeal of the collection, involved the children of the catechism school and has a car full of backpacks ... and so providence multiplies and fear not being able to help so many mothers worried about not giving their children what they need for school melts. September 13: the bell rings on the first day of school! 760 children from Porta Palazzo enter the classroom happy with their new backpack and hundreds of people are happy to have made them happy!

Cristiana Capitani
NP Focus
October 2021