At the headquarters of the Diocese of Caritas Bolzano-Bressanone resides the CaritasCafè, which has two main objectives: it’s a place where Caritas staff members, visitors of the Caritas services and people from outside meet and at the same time the CaritasCafè is a social project. The Bar is alcohol-free and fair-trade beverages and dishes are served. The CaritasCafè is a YoungCaritas project and consists of a youngCaritas staff member, young volunteers and employs young people who have lower chances in the working environment because of difficult social or personal background.
A special characteristic of the CaritasCafè are the cultural projects, like language, upcycling and cooking lessons. Young artists – or whoever wants – can exhibit their artworks. Usually you can find exhibitions of painted art or photography, which arose on a special background.
So did the exhibition “Mir/Noi”, which was inaugurated on the 30th of November 2017. It was organized and realized by Amanda Montesani, a 24-old pedagogic student from Bolzano, who completed an internship at youngCaritas. She brought up the idea of a special project on the topic of migration and mobility.
“Migration takes place because of different motivations and reasons. In the public information, individual stories are often not considered and the topics are generalized. The exhibition wants to show that migration is a characteristic of modern cities and can be seen as a special form of mobility.
The variety of motivations and stories are illustrated by means of eleven different stories of people, who currently live in Bolzano. The main focus of the exhibition is not on the pictures of the people, but on their stories, which are exhibited in form of interviews” explains Amanda Montesani. Of course the visitor is asked to take some time for reading too. In addition a big map is placed inside the CaritasCafè, where visitors can delineate the stations of their life mobility and travelling routes.
Migration is not a burden for a city, but rather a characteristic necessity of our society.
Lisa Moser, volunteer civil service at youngCaritas Bolzano
