I learned that...

We have been experiencing an interesting experiment at the Arsenale dell’Incontro for more than a month: online teaching. It all started with an unexpected event, Covid, which presented us with an apparently impossible challenge: to carry on the life of the Arsenale dell’Incontro with the same care, but at a distance. Trying to live it beyond the physical place, which we cannot attend now. We tell you what we are learning from this experience through the words of the teachers and volunteers who are helping us to keep the Arsenal open anyway.

"Before being a teacher for my students, I am a mother, a friend, a support, a cook, a seamstress ... I smile when I see them on the small screen of my mobile phone and my heart is happy. This pushes me every day to give my best and is food for my soul ». "Covid physically distanced us from our students, but I am learning that nothing can weaken our giving, our belief in the value of the Arsenal and our responsibility to ensure that it always bears fruit." "In this time I have learned that there is nothing impossible if we work as a team and that only in this way can we achieve together the goal of serving humanity". "These are certainly difficult times for everyone, but our working together, exchanging ideas, helping each other to give the best to the children, makes me feel that even if we are each at home, it is as if we were all working in the same place". "In this time of distance education I have seen what I thought impossible took place, I felt firsthand that the impossible does not exist". "Through online teaching I understood that the Arsenale dell’Incontro is not just a center or a place that provides services, but a message present in each of us that can be called: love and peace". "Love is the fruit of our work of this time. The Arsenale and its students are the foundations of this gift that will never end, because love unites us ".

Once again we thank you because the unexpected welcome bears fruits that we often don't even imagine!

Shukran, column of the Arsenale dell'Incontro

NP November 2020