Feb. 18 – “In 1999, NATO bombed Serbia and there was an exodus to Macedonia and Albania. In Macedonia, there wasn’t an institutionalized Italian presence, so we were asked if we could go to the refugee camps, and seven or eight of us went. At the border, the pro-Serbian police took away everything when we told them we were going in the Albanian refugee camps, then the embassy and the UNHCR solved everything. We stayed four months and we began working with the Army. There is a very distorted view of the role of the military in Italy, but in Macedonia the Garibaldi Brigade was the only army that set up the camps, each welcoming 25.000 people. The first rescue came not by the UN or UNHCR, but by Italian soldiers.” Thus begins the story of Caritas Umbria and its president, Massimo Mazzali, who first moved to Macedonia and then to Kosovo, in Slokucjane, to care for war orphans. “With the Foreign Affairs Ministry, until 2 or 3 years ago, we sent to Italy women suffering from cancer. This was possible thanks to CIMIC, the Military Cooperation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who set up a plan for medical evacuation. 400 hundred children were treated, and 250 refugees were hosted in the parishes of Umbria. In the early days, children walked up to us holding mines in their hands. Then we entered the villages and saw so many ill children that we decided to send them to Pisa for adequate medical care, while we sent those suffering from heart conditions to Verona. Many other were operated here at Perasan. “Then the war finally ended, said Mazzali, “and I thought of returning home; but the Bishop asked us to stay in Slokucjane, where we will stay for at least another two years. The UN is leasing us 20 acres of land and a piece of land in Lescok, where we train locals with the help of the Italian Red Cross and the Serafico di Assisi, who takes care of handicapped children, and in particular the blind.” The activity of Caritas Umbria proceeds in full swing, with 40 children who will be put back in a family context soon enough. “We have agreements with the government that allow us to look after and care for the war orphans, those set aside because of mental distress or because their parents are in jail. For them, we’d like to create a cooperative: the boys work and manage themselves, they live in rented houses but they remain linked to us. They are free, working a paid job, and assisting with the poor, working in masonry, physiotherapy, in the fields, in shops, Italian bakeries…”
Caritas Umbria in Kosovo to help children in need
