Stories of a teacher

18 Nov 2011 | Focolare Worldwide

“I am giving a lesson in my new class, first year elementary, of 26 very lively children. As soon as I have laboriously achieved their attention, I hear a knock at the door: it is the caretaker who notifies me that I have a telephone call. It is the mother of Paul; she is stormily separated from her husband with whom she is in perennial quarrel. In these days, both parents are contesting for the child with questionable actions, and bombard with telephone calls also us, teachers. I had every reason to answer that I cannot go to the telephone, that I am giving a lesson, and that I already imagine what it is about. But in that moment through the legitimate reasoning of a teacher who has been interrupted in her work, a sentence makes its way, from the Word of Life: “Make that I speak always as though this is the last word that I say.” It is an occasion to be vigilant! I smile to the caretaker and entrust the class to her and I go to the telephone with a new heart. I listen to what I had already imagined… but up to the end, without judging, without letting the “disturbance” that has been created weigh on us. At the end, I succeed in telling Paul’s mother that I understand her, that I comprehend the state of her soul, but that I believe that for the good of Paul, we can put aside the hurt pride and the rancour, and act only for the good of the child. When, a couple of hours later I pass through the corridor, the caretaker comes near to me and tells me: “You know, that mother has telephoned again… she told me just to tell you Thanks.” Some days ago, while I am leaving school in a hurry, with a thousand programmes to carry out and the shopping to do, I am stopped by Flora, a caretaker of Brazilian origin who only recently works at our Institute. She has to make a written application to the school management, and does not know how to go about it, also because of her language difficulties. I ask myself why, from so many teachers, she asks me who is so busy. The Word of Life invites me once again to “stay awake”: it is Jesus who is asking this! Do I want perhaps to answer that I am in a hurry and that he should ask someone else? I sit with Flora and help her to write the application. Then I propose that she types it with a computer because the presentation is better, but Flora does not know how to use it. We go together in the classroom for informatics and I write it for her, without looking at the watch. Two mornings later, while I am entering the staffroom, Flora stops me and gives me a very beautiful light blue scarf. “You should not have done it, it is not necessary” I tell her. And she answers: “But also I want to be able to love as you have done with me. “ (B.P.-Italia)

Stories of Entrepreneurs:Unitrat of Bari, Italy

17 Nov 2011 | Focolare Worldwide

Franco Caradonna,

In Bolivia: a courageous shelter for children

16 Nov 2011 | Focolare Worldwide

La Guardia is the name of the small town where Reina and Jorge Gutierrez live with their family, twenty kilometres away from Santa Cruz, the emerging Bolivian city. Reina was orphaned, without a mother at the age of six, and was placed in an institute together with her little brother. She relates: “There was nothing but we were in the best condition to believe in the providence of God. Being able to show that the ideal of unity radically changes persons seems to me a specific Bolivian contribution to evangelisation.” “Good will is not enough, competence is also required. So I enrolled in a course for psychopedagology at the moment that we understood that we were able to put up a children’s shelter.” So she graduated within four years, during which she projected and then built the shelter, which was completed in 2008 and then inaugurated in the presence of many persons of authority, and her neighbours. As they needed bread for the 120 children of the shelter, Reina also invented a bakery, modest but very efficient, taken care of by a small equip, composed of lady Esperanca, Carlito, a child of nine years, and her son Daniel, who is 18, and a young girl of 15 years, who works at the bakery and studies in the evening. From the shelter, one can hear the echo of the children and the games. The rooms appear very clean and well laid out. The teachers occupy the children, of various ages, from two to ten years, with ingenious activity and a little anarchy that does not ruin them. They invent games with coloured balloons, and distribute the lunch as though it is an exploration adventure. Each child has his own story of poverty and emargination, of alcoholism, and infidelity among parents, and egoism. Stories that are unbelievable.   In one place, two women concentrated on sewing. Reina has also invented a tailoring unit! There is Rita who has seven children, who is a teacher, and comes here during the rest periods. And Elisa, who has been abandoned by her husband and here, has been helped out of depression. Reina is like that: when she sees single cases in difficulty, she invents adequate solutions. The office of Reina is piled with books. Here the lady also carries out therapy with children who have learning difficulty. The shelter is supported by communal contributions and collaboration with NGO’s, above all by the support from afar of the Action For New Families; without forgetting the contribution of the State for the food, and  the quota of 1,20 bolivar every day (10 euro cents) asked from the parents of the children, a matter of maintaining dignity and participation. Those who work at the shelter or in the related activities do their utmost to “provoke providence”. Under a photo of Chiara Lubich, stands a sentence: “Be always a family.” “I have made this sentence mine-concludes Reina-. I work every day so that the children here can always find a space of family.” Almost as though to soothe a wound that comes from afar, in her heart.   (Source: “Family space”, insert attached to no. 21 of Citta Nuova 2011, pag. 12 and 13)