Semi-dark rooms with dirt floors, rough walls with pastel-coloured paintings and inspiring phrases, 'education is freedom', there’s a hole instead of a pane of glass. This is what the classrooms we visited in some informal refugee camps looked like. Empty perimeters in penumbra, but full of attentive glances that suddenly burst into a shy chorus of 'good moooooorning madame' and a few giggles.

Shortly after, the clink of a metal tray with far too many glasses of sweetened tea arrives, fringed with refined and precious confectionary as if it were embroidered by hand. Immediately you realise that things are done with care here and that the few objects present have been placed in a specific place, and that's where they belong. Like the people themselves.

Apparently, there are no prospects for these people and time seems to stand still. Yet even here eyes are capable of seeing things differently, and while everyday life appears to offer no more than survival, they succeed in imagining the best and then achieving it.
This year ended with the feeling that there is a growing number of such places in the world: spaces where rights are denied, made up of eyes that are unaware of what they are being deprived of. A year marked by too many conflicts and too much violence, which have suddenly turned places close to our hearts unsafe, places where life has stopped and fear prevails.
Holding our breath, our response is to continue to act as always, but at the same time becoming stronger: together, we can do it.

Indeed, we believe in our ability to activate a collaborative work spirit, to transform emptiness into places of initiative and active relations. Where maintenance is carried out, people are assisted and a community is built. Actions create movement, communication, networks and provide an added value.
In such an uncertain period, we wanted to strengthen time, take long-term action, ask those questions that require, at times, awkward answers, which cannot always be found in the short-term. Time that is needed for courage to grow as well as taking the risk of creating something unexpected.

We have always tried to imagine those glances at some time in the future, when glasses of tea are empty and the hands waving goodbye slowly fade in the distance as we leave.
What paths will their lives take? Will they have the chance to study, to choose a job, future opportunities?
After a gust of wind, behind the dust we catch a glimpse of the people who remain.
Among them, there are a few people who stay behind to try to achieve the impossible. These are our travelling companions, courageous professionals who with lucidity and obstinacy decide every day to be there. We have dedicated this year to them and to their ability to keep their feet firmly on the ground with their eyes focused on the future.

Rita Ruffoli