The journey began with a gift from the children for their mother’s sixtieth birthday. An unexpected and precious present that made possible what had once seemed almost unreachable: meeting again distant friends they had first encountered during the Famiglie Nuove conference in Castel Gandolfo. From that meeting, a simple and authentic bond had grown with Bolivian families — a friendship no one imagined would continue and, years later, become a new encounter on the other side of the world.
The two couples from Vicenza — Redi and Giacomo, Annalisa and Sergio — active members of Famiglie Nuove in Vicenza, were also able to visit AFN’s projects in Bolivia: the “Clara Luz” childhood center in Santa Cruz and the “Rincón de Luz” social center in Cochabamba.
In Santa Cruz, in the La Guardia district, the “Clara Luz” center welcomes young children and preschoolers every day. “The classrooms are simple, yet well cared for and welcoming,” the couples from Vicenza recount. “Here, children find a safe educational environment, while older brothers and sisters receive academic support.” Around them, a broader effort also involves families through home gardens, small-scale farming, and training programs that help build autonomy and dignity.
During the visit, they were deeply moved by meeting Reyna, who shared the origins of the project. After returning to Bolivia following a period of formation at the Scuola Loreto in Loppiano (Italy), she felt a strong desire to embody Chiara Lubich’s ideal in concrete action. Together with her entire family — her children, daughters-in-law, and husband — she began welcoming about ten children into her own home. Step by step, the project grew and became more structured, eventually reaching around 150 children. “We were struck by the concreteness of her choice and the involvement of her family in an experience that continues to generate so much life.”
In Cochabamba, the Rincón de Luz (“Corner of Light”) center has become a meeting point for many people in need, as it is located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Its main goal is to help people live with dignity and feel loved. For this reason, the center also offers educational support activities and workshops for both parents and children. The Food Bank supports the center by providing fresh and dry food supplies. Families receiving these provisions also contribute by helping organize and distribute the food packages, while ensuring that nothing is sold and that everything truly benefits the families in need.
Local families often live in situations of great fragility: poverty, loneliness, and lives marked by grief and hardship. One symbolic story is that of an elderly grandmother caring for her disabled husband and her orphaned granddaughter. “She looked older than she really was, marked by suffering. Every day she walks many kilometers to reach the center, not only to find something to eat, but also to help the volunteers,” they recount.
Among the people they met was also Silvio, one of the first children welcomed by the project. Today, he plays an active role in the Rincón de Luz community: “He supports families with great sensitivity, distributes aid, and offers his time in service to others. You can truly sense that this place is his home.”
The journey proved to be a deeply moving experience, allowing them to “touch with their own hands” not only poverty, but also the dignity and reciprocity present within the community. “It was already a gift for us to meet and listen to the stories of these women,” they say, “but we received so much more.”
One gesture, above all, remains in their hearts: “There was an avocado tree there, and immediately an elderly man brought a ladder while another woman supported by the center eagerly began picking the fruit to give to us. It was truly a sign we carried home with deep gratitude: while listening to them, you wonder what you could possibly give, and yet they are the first, even in their poverty, to find something concrete to offer us.”
From this experience came the desire to continue this friendship across the distance. “We realized that what is truly needed is a constant drop of support, and we are already imagining new initiatives to involve others: a solidarity dinner, moments of sharing to introduce the project — all ways to broaden this experience of families among families, where geographical distance becomes smaller and gives way to a deep and authentic friendship.”
(Source: AFN – Author: Giovanna Pieroni)
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