mercoledì 21 maggio 2014

Mexico: Y4UW yearn for social change

Mexico, like many other countries in Latin America, is a country with a big geographical, social and cultural diversity. It is a country where the majority of the population is made up of young people and we Youth for a United World have found a way how to spread our ideal of a united world.
Every day, we face many different challenges: poverty, drugs, illiteracy..., however, the discovery that each one of us can enrich the others leads us to look for those moments in which we can build relationships. We feel part of one big family.
In Mexico, Catholicism is very strong and young people participate actively to pilgrimages, parish groups, devotion to the saints and these things reflect the faith of our people.
In this context, the figure of Chiara Luce gave us the opportunity to learn about another way of living our faith. Chiara Luce is a model for young people and she invites us to go on, to face pain and sorrow and to live every moment, every difficult in a new way.
Many musicals on Chiara Luce were performed in different cities. Each one had its own characteristic though maintain the same goal: to reach a greater number of people and cry out that we have only one life and we want to live it out as best as we can.
Last year, the chapel of Mariapolis El Diamante (little town of the Focolare Movement) was dedicated to Chiara Luce. It was the moment when we all realized that we cannot live Chiara Luce’s example only when we are in Church but “to take her along” with us to as many places as possible: at home, in the shops, in schools, to prisons, and so on.
One of the big problems that afflict Mexico is drug trafficking and we Y4UWs felt the great need to give our contribution in giving a concrete answer to this situation. In fact, we have committed ourselves to change fear into smiles, and into a request for peace. We have distributed stickers and banners with messages of peace in many streets of the major cities.

Another reality in which we have tried to commit ourselves is the care for poor children and the elderly. In many cites these two sectors of society are the ones that suffer most. They are often abandoned.
We regularly meet children to share a family atmosphere, to eat together, to play games and also to face the problem of illiteracy, which is widespread. Confident that helping out children is a guarantee for a renewed present and future society, we are trying to find was how to give them dignity and a place in society.
With the elderly persons, we encounter a sector of society that suffers for loneliness. In Mexico there are many places where one can leave the elderly ones when the family doesn’t want to take better care of them, many times they die there without seeing their families. We visit some homes on monthly basis and we share the beautiful things we do, we sing, we play or we just listen to their heart rending stories. While being with them, we discovered that all we try to give selflessly returns back to us through smiles, hugs and thank you’s.
Over and over again, we discover that every reality that we come across is a chance to go beyond our limits, our sorrows, our age differences, our fears and start that change in our country that we all yearn for.

Karen Trujillo

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