Here we are, as always!

Returning to welcome our children and teenagers here at the Arsenale after almost three months of closure is not an immediate path. He asks to involve all the people who are "home" with us for our little ones (teachers, educators, parents, brothers and sisters ...) in a new normality, which takes into account all the safety and security rules but not the make it become a barrier, an obstacle to our becoming a community. Never as in this time do children and their families need to feel that we are there and that we are close, as always, more than ever.

 

So we alternate moments of training and discussion that help us keep motivation high, with meetings with our children and young people and their families in the outdoor spaces of the Arsenale: games, dances, crafts, puppet theater and lots of listening to us. they made everyone go together to the roots of our being here. How many mothers and fathers have told us: "In recent months when we heard about Italy it was natural for us to listen to the news with the same attention we have for those here, because we were thinking of you and your families". Others told us that during the lockdown they had to take their children several times to see from the outside that the Arsenal was still there, that we were here even if we didn't see each other because only this reassured them.

 

How many gestures of our children have made us understand without words the thirst for good that no distance can extinguish or weaken: many have arrived dressed up, some looked around as if they were in paradise and it took almost an hour to realize that yes, it was true, they were here ... One of the older boys arrived with six large bags full of cans and empty plastic bottles: during all the months of closure he continued to recycle and have his whole family recycled for the 'Arsenal. The brothers accompanying him tell us: «Excuse me, let's imagine that at this time the collection is suspended, but Fadi just didn't want to hear about it. He kept telling us: we can't stop, he's for the Arsenal! ».

 

 

Arsenale dell'Incontro

from Nuovo Progetto, august-semptember 2020