The Kids Village is not a Parking Lot for Children- Here there is the true experience of the Meeting

-Efraim and Cristina talk about their experience volunteering

“On the last day of the Meeting every year we need to take down everything that can’t be reused. I will always remember my son’s tears in that final moment.” This is Efraim Zaccaria’s answer to the question, “why is the Meeting a source of good for the world?”. Efraim has been coming to the Meeting since he was a child, and he continues this adventure as a father. One day, his friend suggested he put his passion for the theatre to use at the Kids Village. This year the theatre production is titled “I am truly (un)fortunate”, and it is dedicated to Collodi’s Pinocchio. The story reinterprets the adventures of the world’s most famous puppet, focusing on the search for what is missing. The disproportion of the desire finds fertile ground in children because they are used to imagining. It is not easy to realize this, as one easily gets lots in the space of childish fantasy, where is difficult to find the rationality of men. Often we prefer to avoid the effort of exploring that unexplored territory and end up forgetting their dreams. “What is your desire? We parents are no longer used to asking this to our children, because they already have everything”. This is what Cristina Bianchi affirms, who increasingly calls into play her vocation as a teacher to fight the reduction of the horizon and the atrophy of the gaze. Cristina’s greatest involvement in the Kids Village occurred three years ago, following a request to participate. Cristina knew that that activity was a perfect match for her creativity, inextinguishable flame of life, but she could not imagine the warmth it would generate. The “Living Fairy Tale” is an expedient that favors the immersion of the child in the story, placing him physically in the places and among the narrated characters. From a simple idea like telling the story of the Wizard of Oz, a themed scenographic path is born full of obstacles, tests to overcome and mystery, created with the help of the students of the Brera Academy. The result is wonderful, but not as wonderful as understanding we have found a community capable of welcoming and caring for our needs. Like children, adults are also capable of enjoying beauty, although with a greater number of filters, and just like them they do not need only words but must experience an authentic correspondence in their experience. Efraim and Cristina support the Meeting with their presence at the Kids Village, grateful for the humanity they encounter and the festive atmosphere they find there. “The Meeting is a point of hope” says Cristina and this hope must continue to exist. The “Donate now” is a simple and concrete way to support this hope and to allow many children to live the experience of listening to the story of Pinocchio or wandering around the rooms of the Wizard of Oz exhibition.