Following their return to Duino for their generation’s Reunion, a group of 10 UWC alumni spent a week going to Udine (55 km) every day to volunteer in a refugee camp that is run by the local Red Cross unit – Croce Rossa Italiana Comitato di Udine. Some had previous experience of working with refugees from the time of the Balkan wars, when they were students in Duino, with some still actively involved in refugee volunteering today. On the occasion of revisiting the college for the 2016 Reunion they wanted to renew their efforts in the light of the global refugee crisis and make their return to UWC Adriatic even more meaningful. Faced with a surge in the arrival of asylum-seekers, the Red Cross responded most enthusiastically.
The camp that opened its doors to our reunion volunteers is for single men of varying ages (18-30), mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan (but also some Turkish and Iranians), who come to build a new life away from unstable circumstances in their home country. Their conditions in Udine are basic but safe, however many of them have made a long (even six-month) journey on foot which has often involved the investment of life savings. It is not a journey that any of them have taken lightly, and many have struggled very hard to get to Northern Italy. More than anything else, UWC’s volunteers directed their efforts at reaching out to the refugees and finding ways to help them integrate into the community.
Our volunteers spent 6 hours at the camp every day, sitting down in small groups of refugees, sorting out their different literacy and language capabilities. The first task they undertook was to prepare and hang up on the walls of the canteen a great number of sheets of paper, each bearing the drawing of an everyday object followed by its name in English and Italian as well as the Urdu and Pashtun phonetics. After dealing with “table”, “chair”, “plate”, “fork”…, this visual glossary was then extended to adjectives (colours, emotions), numbers, the weather and the world beyond the camp (“bus station”, “ticket office” and so on). The second task was to help as many of them as possible to fill in a questionnaire for the Prefettura, aiming to collect some information for the purpose of finding some employment opportunities for these men.
The refugees appreciated all of this immensely, promptly turning up for activities as soon as they realised the College vans had entered the camp in the morning, a case in point being an illiterate man who has learned to write his own name. The sense of achievement he expressed in mastering this simple but essential task was probably one of the most memorable moments the UWC Reunion volunteers will take back home with them.
Due to the scale of the global refugee crisis and the incredible pressure on the Red Cross in this part of Italy, the process of moving the refugees to more settled conditions has been slower than is intended in the “Caserma Friuli” camp, where under 180 asylum seekers now live. There is also another camp in Udine (“Caserma Cavarzerani”), where more than 800 Pakistani refugees live, mostly in tents and in even more dire conditions. Many of them continue to face great uncertainty despite having made the greatest part of their physical journeys already. By equipping them with basic communications skills for their new environments, UWC’s volunteers attempt to ease some of that uncertainty. The work done by the 2016 Reunion volunteers demonstrates how UWC Adriatic’s students continue to carry forward the UWC message of compassion and education and do so in order to improve the lives of others in the global community.
