Of course they exist. They make us tick.
I grew up in Italy, where I was born in 1988. I have been used to traveling since I was a child. First with my parents and then while growing up, I started to explore the world alone or with friends. One day I decided to go on a bike trip from Verona, my hometown, to Istanbul. There I met many Syrian people who had escaped from the war, so I decided to take some photos and collect some stories. I wanted to be useful. I was a former boy scout, so I had this type of background.
In 2016, there were 15,000 people from Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Kurdistan stuck at Idomeni on the Greek border with Macedonia. It was all over the media, so together with five other people, we decided to go check out what was going on.
We started to help people, just as activists, but after a year we founded an NGO in Italy, we called it One Bridge To- (OBT-). Since then, we have founded many projects on the refugee routes feeding through from the Balkans. Right now, for example, we work in Kurdistan, where I am the manager of the project, as well as in Verona, Italy.
Our first mission as an organization is to go and provide some support, but also to gather and return with the stories. We work with schools because, fundamentally, our work is all about a better future for every human being. The best future for everyone starts with the younger generation, so we have to reach them.
It’s not about inclusion. Inclusion means incorporating someone into your culture, so they might lose theirs. It’s about respect for different cultures, understanding that other people are the same as us.
I didn’t do any kind of humanitarian rights studies. I studied chemistry, photography, and now I am working in applied technology. But, of course, I am working every day trying to grow our projects to support those who need it the most.
My story is a little bit unusual. I’m actually a businessman with a background in import/export. In 2015, when so many refugees arrived in Germany, there was a camp just around the corner from my office. I walked there to ask whether I could help with logistics.
So I started helping one hour a day, then three hours a day. In 2016, they needed someone to drive a truck to Greece, when their former refugee route was interrupted in northern Greece. Some 20,000 people or more were stranded, basically in the fields. They had nothing. So, I grabbed a truck with some things, including medicine, because I was going to meet a doctor.
I walked around the camp with the doctor every day for ten hours: 10am to 10pm. You can imagine how bad the conditions these people were living in was. They had nothing to eat and had already been there for six months.
So, I told the doctor that what he was doing was amazing, and he suggested we could do something more permanent. I returned to Hamburg with that idea in mind. Then we bought an old truck, filled it with medicine, and drove it to Greece. We put out an advertisement to get medical professionals involved: “Hey, doctors and nurses of the world! Would you come help us with a clinic on wheels?” Because I am not a doctor.
Well, that worked and so we started in Thessaloniki, and later we went to Lesbos. I found it very strange, but I later heard there was a need in Dunkirk, so helped set up a similar project there.
Back in 2016 when I started, I thought: “Well, we are a very rich country, we will easily solve this problem.” If somebody had told me back then, I would be doing this for eight years, I'm not sure whether I could have done it. It is really hard. And it’s no better than it was in 2016.
My motivation comes from being on the ground. Sometimes I just have to close my laptop and go see what is happening in the project. When I see how much work is really, really needed, that keeps me motivated.
I was born in 1995, and I work in an organization that I founded with some friends in 2016. That year, we went to the border between Greece and Macedonia because of the refugee crisis there. After that, my life changed.
Before that, I was a normal guy in my first year of university studying philosophy. I still study philosophy, but I’ve been more and more involved in my current work, helping migrants.
After Greece, we moved to Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovinia, then to the Greek islands, and then a new project in Verona. So, I have spent the last eight years involved in this, and there have been up and downs, of course. There were maybe two or three years where I spent more than five months a year in foreign countries. But for the past two years, I have settled in Verona, my hometown, working in the project here. I’m really very operational, super involved.
In reality, the situation crudely presented the failure of the European Union’s values.
I was looking at a camp where 20,000 people were stuck in Greece after Macedonia closed its border. In a muddy field in the middle of the winter. Families with babies, in the freezing cold.
When I saw this, I found myself completely lost in front of this scenario where I just saw the European values drowning in the mud. I cannot believe that I can ever go back from that day. My life now, my energy, revolves around those who suffer, those who have no rights, those who are forgotten by this system.
So, it’s the anger, the rage that drives me and gives me energy sometimes. The emotional impact of what I see. But I have turn this anger from an emotion to fuel that keeps me going, to carry on working. Some days I ask myself if I will be able to do this for the rest of my life. I don’t know. I can see myself as a teacher, working with young people. I feel I have something to teach them.
I struggle every day with this. I envy friends who are working nine to five job, living a comfortable life. It’s hard to deal with this. I have had to develop a kind of protective shield, it is not indifference, rather something that protects me from the daily traumas that I see. Things like seeing migrants who reach Verona, and then have to wait maybe 15 months for their first appointment at the police station. In the meantime, they have no place to stay, no documents, no money. And every day the situation is becoming worse and worse.
Could one be meaningful to you?
