Faces and voices

Faces and personal experiences give poverty a voice. Caritas Europe, in view of the presentation of the “Zero Poverty” campaign, collected many personal stories, which exemplify the new forms of poverty and social exclusion in the Old Continent. Sad stories of marginalization and poverty were conveyed along with cases of solidarity and care for the neighbor… All the stories were deeply moving.Mental diseases and lack of services. “We provide assistance to people who suffer from mental diseases and who are poor under all aspects, firstly because they are ill, and secondly because they don’t have a home of their own and they lost their jobs. Not to mention loneliness and the lack of interpersonal relations often within their own families, that have broken up”. Danijela Varsic is a social worker in Serbia, “According to statistics, poor people have more chances to develop a mental disease than the rich population. And poverty has devastating effects on these people who are not accepted by society. In fact, here we still have enormous psychiatric hospitals where mentally deranged people are closed in … hospital staff do their best, but they are unable to provide the needed services due to a lack in resources”.Oksana and Adriana, lonely and poor. Living without parents, in material precariousness and solitude. Zoryana Lukavetska, from Caritas Ukraine, told the story of two sisters, Oksana e Adriana, abandoned by their father when they were still children. The mother worked for some time in a furniture factory that eventually shut down. She moved abroad (to the Czech Republic and to Spain), and spent several years away from home as an illegal worker. “At 15 Adriana committed suicide – said the Caritas counselor -. Living away from her parents was too much to bear. She would argue with her peers, she lagged behind in school and her relationship with her grandmother completely lacked mutual trust”. Oksana “suffered deeply for the loss of her sister – she continues -. She is now part of the Social Assistance project for children of immigrant workers” set up by Caritas. “She has a more positive view of life and managed to establish new relations with the social workers and the other recipients of the project, who helped mend her sense of emptiness and abandonment, caused by the loss of her dear ones”. Tears over a coffee… “I think that only few people truly understand what poverty is all about”. Rosemary Keenan, from Caritas Social Action UK, describes contemporary poverty with an example. “At Christmas we distribute toys and food to poor families. This year in London’s East End we met a mother who broke out into tears when we offered her some instant coffee”. Keenan continues: “It wasn’t even a brand-quality coffee, but only a supermarket version. But she started crying, since so much time had passed since she could last afford purchasing one herself, for all the money she had went in clothes and food for her children”. Albert Nikolla, director of Caritas Albania, tells a completely different story. “There is a new form of poverty that was unheard of under the Communist regime. It’s the addiction caused by gambling. While in the past it had been outlawed, today it’s one of the consequences of the crisis. Many people fall into this trap and an incredible number of murders are committed in gaming rooms! Four to five murders a month in a Country with a population of one million inhabitants”.A beautiful story from Greece. From Portugal, Josè Pires Manso, university professor and Caritas counselor, underlines the increase in the number of retired workers. “It’s a problem that involves the fiscal system and social assistance”, he remarks. Furthermore, he points out, “We register high numbers of drop-outs. Many pupils leave school when they turn 16. We’re seeking to develop programs that will attract them and bring them back to school”. Aglaia Konstantakopoulou, social worker in Greece, shared a “positive experience”. “I met an Iraqi woman with three children. She had health problems and would visit our centre at least twice a week. After a long period of counseling and thanks to the food and clothes donated to her children she managed to place the younger son in kindergarten so she could find a job, support her family and take Greek lessons. Finally, her diploma was officially recognized and she was given the possibility to work as a teacher”.