It will be dedicated to the Asian country known for the exploitation of workers in textile companies Campagna 2024 of the PIME missionary center. Objective: to create training and work opportunities for young people and women
The first PIME missionaries arrived in Bangladesh, then Indian Bengal, in 1855, just five years after the foundation of the Institute. Since its inception, their work has been oriented towards meeting, listening to and supporting those most in need, especially children and young people. «Going to meet people and sharing their lives is the beauty of the mission!», says Father Michele Brambilla, PIME missionary in the country from 2006 until a few months ago. «From the beginning, a major part of our commitment has been to visit the villages. Even in urban contexts we never neglect human relationships, friendships with families, support for young people who need advice or material help.”
Over the years, the challenges that our missionaries have been forced to face have been many and varied; today the biggest one that finds them on the front line is linked to the social and working inclusion of young people through reception, scholastic and human training and raising awareness and awareness of their rights.
Almost devoid of natural resources, Bangladesh is facing a process of wild industrialization which has generated serious inequalities: millions of new poor live on 2.15 dollars a day, while there is a strong disparity in growth opportunities between cities and rural areas and many young people, especially women, are not employed despite the country’s economic growth. Among the causes of unemployment is the lack of adequate education and opportunities for children from rural contexts. Many of these are led to emigrate to other countries or move to cities to look for work, but without having sufficient economic resources for housing or living with dignity.
Faced with these needs, our missionaries are alongside young people and women offering hospitality, education, healthcare and technical and professional training. The desire is to offer new job opportunities to girls and boys who would otherwise be destined to remain confined to poverty or mechanisms of exploitation. The new Pime Center 2024 campaign dedicated to Bangladesh was born from this urgency: S149 – Sewing stories, weaving relationships. Training and work for women and young people.
Today the PIME missions in Bangladesh are located in three dioceses – Dinajpur, Rajshahi and Dhaka – and guarantee support and assistance to the communities through reception initiatives, health, social, educational and training programmes: hostels dedicated to hosting young people from rural people looking for accommodation in big cities to have a better chance of accessing the world of work; educational centers for children of tribal origin who can thus receive adequate instruction and education; social awareness programs to reduce discrimination against women and vulnerable people.
The S149 campaign wants to promote professional training and the social and working inclusion of women and young people in a historical moment that requires targeted and urgent intervention. «Discovering your path in life is no easy feat. It is not the case in Bangladesh, for a young man born in a country village and looking for a chance in the big city”, says Sister Annamaria Panza, missionary of the Immaculate Conception for years in the country. «Today there are many who continue their studies and want to leave the fields, but what are the alternatives? Many flock to Dhaka to work in the factories, but it is a very hard life, in accommodations that are holes shared with others, without the support that the village offers despite everything, for low wages and without prospects of a stable situation.”
The “Sewing stories, weaving relationships” campaign in its title contains what we most want to do: sewing the stories of young Bengali men and women, weaving lasting and healthy human relationships between the communities in which our missionaries work, cultivating change in a a context that in Italy we are only marginally familiar with or have heard of only because it is linked to the exploitation of labor by large international textile companies.
This year we want to weave and sew a story that talks about this country at 360°, discovering its peculiarities and taking the opportunity to act in a concrete way in favor of the segment of the population that most needs intervention: young people, so that they become themselves promoters of the future development of the society to which they belong.
All areas of the Mission Center will be involved in this perspective. There S149 campaign will be aimed at promoting and financing activities both in the field, through the work of our missionaries, and in Italy: from communication through our media to the promotion of events, from educational interventions in schools to exhibitions at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures, from missionary animation of young people at the readings proposed by the Library.
This Holy Christmas we ask you to offer your support to Bangladeshi young people and women, to their education and their future.
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