The imagination of charity” “

From gambling to Internet dependence, from the children of Chernobyl to immigrants from Ecuador, from the social rehabilitation of former jailbirds to the campaign against the trafficking in women and children: these are just some of the fields in which the various European Caritas agencies are engaged. Their representatives met in Rome on 3 and 4 July, on the initiative of Caritas Europe – which is based in Brussels and coordinates the work of Caritas in 44 countries – to discuss social policies, aid to the southern hemisphere, cooperation within Europe and immigration. Below we describe just some of the many Caritas projects in Europe. Gamblers and ex-detainees are the two privileged fields for the attention of Caritas Malta. The programmes for the victims of usury and for compulsive gamblers – explains Msgr. Victor Grech, director of Caritas Malta – “are run in the form of self-help groups, attended by hundreds of people; those who have got over their dependence help the others”. In Malta, a tourist island at the heart of the Mediterranean with a population of 380,000 inhabitants, drug abuse, alcohol and gambling in all its forms (lottery, casino, slot machines) are rife. “The participants are followed for at least two years – he explains –. Some 2000 people have got over their dependence thanks to our programme”. Another feather in the cap of Caritas Malta is its programme for ex-detainees; they are given accommodation for two years in a family house prior to their reinsertion in society. “It’s a house with open doors that can accommodate 14 ex-detainees – he says –. They are helped by psychotherapists, physiotherapists and other experts. The inmates live in common; they can meet the members of their family each week. We help them find a job, heal their relations with their families, restore their personal self-esteem and thus make them more responsible for their actions”. Controls conducted on the last 7 years of the programme show that 95% of the ex-detainees on the programme, especially young adults below the age of 30, have not re-offended (the main offences being robberies, physical and psychological violence). Other activities of Caritas Malta include a programme of prevention and education in values in schools; a programme in industry aimed at raising workers’ awareness about the social problems and projects to assist the many irregular immigrants who pass through Malta. “A thousand or so illegal immigrants live in camps under military surveillance – he explains –. We have succeeded in enabling their children to attend Catholic schools”. The trafficking in women and children: that’s the field in which Caritas in the Ukraine is making its biggest commitment. Some 49 million people live in the Ukraine, and there is a foreign diaspora of a further 6 million. The problem is described to us by Ken Nowakowski, of Caritas Ukraine. “The economic situation of our country is very difficult, as a result of which many women are the victims of the white slave trade – he explains –. That happens especially with girls brought up in orphanages. Once they turn the age of sixteen, they are no longer under the responsibility of the government and are forced to leave the institutions in which they were brought up. People from the underworld wait for them at the gates, and promise them employment in restaurants abroad. But when they arrive in their country of destination they discover that they are not destined to work in a restaurant, but on the street”. To curb this phenomenon Caritas has put into practice a programme of lobbying and collaborates with other NGOs to inform women of the risks they run. It also provides medical and psychological assistance to women who return home after exploitation abroad. “In the space of a few months we have assisted 15 women – says Nowakowski –, but the victims of the trade run into their thousands; there’s an international network with links in each country that supports it. A distinction also needs to be drawn between the trade in women for sexual exploitation or for labour exploitation. Women are helped to enter a country illegally and forced into underpaid jobs as waitresses or domestics”. The other programmes run by Caritas Ukraine provide accommodation and assistance for street children – “there are large numbers of them” -; the programme has centres in various cities and a mobile unit with staff with the necessary experience to approach the children, “who are often stupefied by glue sniffing and terrified. We try to win their trust”. The children of Chernobyl and the families that still feel the effects of the disaster of the nuclear power station in 1986 are the main focus of attention of Caritas in Belarus. The director Mikhail Sapel explains that Caritas, which had been unable to carry out its activities during the Communist period, has only recently begun to do so, beginning practically from zero: “We are trying to structure our organization. The second step is to find our place in civil society and make our work more professional”. Apart from distributing humanitarian aid such as clothes and food, Caritas Belarus is planning to set up a centre to provide accommodation, and also psychological support, to poor families forced to bring their children to the hospital in Minsk for treatment. “We are also helping children and families living in the villages close to Chernobyl, where the effects of the disaster are still being felt”, he explains. Self-sufficiency and responsibility for women who do not have the cultural resources or material means to raise a family: that happens also in Europe, as in some cities of Portugal, where Caritas organizes, as part of the European Equal project, groups attended by a dozen women to “teach them how to live, and how to bring up their own children”. The project is described by Maria Francisca de Carvalho, of Caritas Portugal. “They are poor women, some are gipsies, many don’t have a family, or their families are split up, and they don’t have a job. They learn to cook, to make clothes for themselves, to work in groups, to speak in public. It’s wonderful to see how the women gradually acquire self-sufficiency and faith in themselves”. Why women in particular? “Because they are the ones who most frequently knock at our door, asking for help: food, medicine, milk”. Internet dependence may also be a disease or addiction among young people, and should not be underestimated. The problem is posed in Hungary, where Caritas, among its many projects and activities at the national, international and diocesan, is running a programme against Internet dependence. “There are people, especially youngsters, who spend whole nights in front of the computer – says Laszlo Adànyi, secretary of Caritas Hungary –. Reports of the problem come to us from teachers, who have realized some abnormalities among their students. They thought they were problems of drugs, because the symptoms were the same; but then they discovered that some of them were spending their nights chatting or surfing on the Internet. And often the hobby is transformed into dependence”. The project is being run in Budapest and in seven other Hungarian cities. It consists of small self-help groups assisted by experts who convince the kids to accept counselling, in agreement with their families. “The first step to take – says Adànyi – is to admit the existence of this disease”. Immigration and cooperation in development are two sides of the same coin in the view of Caritas Spain, which has implemented one of the best programmes of its kind in Europe, also in view of the geographic position of the Iberian peninsula, a place of disembarkation and transit of hundreds of thousands of migrants, often irregular. “One cannot combat the negative effects of migration without taking into account the reality of countries in the southern hemisphere – says Silverio Agea Rodriguez, general secretary of Caritas Spain –. That’s why we are trying to implement a migratory policy combined with an effective policy of cooperation in development”. An example is the programme with Ecuador, the country with the greatest provenance of immigrants in Spain. Having ascertained the grave problem of Ecuador’s foreign debt and the revenues that derive from the earnings repatriated by immigrants, Caritas Spain then conceived the idea of asking Ecuadorian immigrants to “invest in the development of their country”, instead of spending their own money on material goods. How? “By channelling the money through an ethical bank and allocating it directly to the immigrant’s family. Thanks to an agreement, to each dollar invested by the immigrant the Spanish government and the Ecuadorian government add a further two”. In three years some 10,000/11,000 persons have already been involved in the programme, and it is hoped that the idea may now be extended to Argentina and the Dominican Republic. But Caritas also tries to diffuse, through a network of local radio stations, reliable information on the labour market and the living conditions that await immigrants on their arrival in Europe. At the same time, they try to educate Spaniards to consider immigration not as a threat, but as a resource.