“For this Christmas we don't have one specific project to highlight,” explained Bro. Giampietro Pettenon, SDB, President of "Missioni Don Bosco", “but rather a bundle of initiatives by Salesians around the world to support the people who are most fragile in the Covid-19 emergency.”
Since the beginning of the year, various emergency interventions have been activated: food and economic aid, especially for people who no longer have income from sporadic, daily paid jobs; the mobilization of volunteers and pupils from Salesian schools in health initiatives and the distribution of aid, including the manufacture of masks; awareness-raising and preventive information in the peripheries and rural villages; refuge for the sick to be kept away from their families even in the precarious conditions of refugees.
The Advent calendar thus aims to remind friends and benefactors of the importance of the help given this year, along with an invitation to go and view a project every day by typing "Covid" in the site's search engine: https://news.missionidonbosco.org/
The intention is to urge everyone to look beyond the situation in their own country and not to forget the needs of those who, even before the pandemic, were living in dire health and food emergencies and today face the adversities generated by the coronavirus empty-handed.
The calendar concludes with an invitation to follow the traditional Christmas Concert in the Vatican (Aula Paolo VI) which on 24 December, the Italian TV channel Canale 5 will broadcast in support of the global campaign against Covid-19.
