We’ve been working for months to open up registration for volunteers for the 2021 Meeting. It was a task made up of encounters, evaluations, discussions, collaboration and procedures to review.

Why do we care about our volunteers so much?

Every single one of them harbours a mysterious origin, which drives their freedom, their desire to freely give a part of themselves, to give even when they have to pay out of their own pocket in order to be at the Meeting. And that origin demands respect and dedication.

We want each of the volunteers to not be called upon just to work, but to actively participate and be protagonists in an experience which is a good for them and their own lives.

After all the work done by the Volunteers Office, with this outlook in mind, we reached the 15th of May. Registration opened.

The first to sign up were the youngest. We see it as a sign of the times. And it’s not just out of a desire to get out of the house, but instead for a heart which not even Covid has extinguished, indeed it shouts even louder, it desires, it seeks a place where it can see, where it can breathe.

Our young people need a place where hope is tangible. We were im- mediately moved and inspired to recognise our historic and personal respon- sibility!

At the time of writing to you, over 500 university students have joined us and many adults are signing up.

All of us who work at the Meeting are asked to be open as we carry out our work, above all open to let ourselves be surprised by the freedom that drives us, and which we never know where it takes us.