The alarm sounds for the new poverties: psychological and relational. The pandemic, the lockdowns and the effects caused by the war in Ukraine have accentuated the situations of hardship, especially within families that were already in economic difficulties. Situations that sometimes escape not only the average citizen, but also the bodies in charge.
It was talked about in a meeting that the Lions Club Belluno organized with two people who are part of as many provincial realities who daily face and fight situations of hardship: between Esterino Biesuz, administrator of the parish of Mussoi and Margherita Chemello, volunteer of the Pharmacy service “of the Immaculate” of Belluno.
According to the religious, who touches the problems daily, also based on the activity of the canteen managed by the friars, there is not only economic poverty: in the face of the new poor who ask for a hot meal and the almost unchanged number of families who withdraw their bags. with the shopping every fortnight, psychological and relational poverty has greatly increased: “In August”, he said, “we reopened the canteen and there are people who come all the groups not so much to eat, but to overcome loneliness”.
Young people and lonely people are the subjects who struggle to move forward in everyday life: “There are boys”, the friar of Mussoi pointed out, “who struggle to play in groups, to communicate, young people who shut up and isolate themselves in front of the computer or mobile phone where they often encounter the violence of social media, in a virtual reality that becomes real for them “.
“I am concerned about the birth of the baby gangs in Belluno which are the result of this inability to dialogue and confront each other, a consequence of a strong discomfort, often not understood in the family”.
According to Fra Esterino, these are complex phenomena, sometimes due to family crises or due to educational vacuum, but certainly because “in young people there is a lot of disillusionment, lack of hope and vision of the future, a poverty of values. For this “, he stressed,” I would consider a period of civil service very useful for young people where you realize that even those around you have their problems and, moreover, you are inserted in a society that has its own rules “.
“We too, as Pharmacy of the Immaculate Conception, have seen the worsening of poverty”, said Margherita Chemello, a volunteer at the facility, “the period of isolation due to Covid has often made those who were leaving fall back into addictions, has seen an increase in family violence and in particular against women. Single-income mothers who are forced to lose their dignity to pay the rent. This pharmacy takes care of the last and the most needy but there are various requests for help, visits, in particular for dental treatments that they cannot satisfy and therefore patients have to give them up ».
At the end, the president of the Lions Club Belluno Fabio Soppelsa gave the friars of Mussoi some vouchers for food to be used in the “Kanguro” supermarkets and at the Immaculate’s Pharmacy vouchers for over-the-counter drugs, hygiene products and for children to be used in Dolomites Pharmacies. “Two companies that have collaborated on our initiative and to which our thanks go”, Soppelsa underlined.