Frontiere di Pace

It started a year ago, from the parish of Rebbio, the solidarity cordate that over the past 12 months has brought humanitarian aid from our area to Ukraine. "It is an initiative that started spontaneously," Giambattista Mosa, coordinator of Frontiere di Pace, explains, "which then involved increasingly more people and realities. Today we rely on the parish of Maccio, which has become our headquarters. In the little church all the material is collected that will then be delivered to Ukraine. We started with the first trips that led us, in March 2022, to the border with Poland. With the passage of time and thanks to close contact with Father Ihor Boyko, rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, we went deeper into this war-torn country, and last August we made our first trip to Kharkiv. Here we were able to experience firsthand the dramatic situation in which thousands of families live, especially women and children, who go to the collection center in this city once a week to pick up food, clothing and medicine." In Kharkiv, food is brought and distributed weekly at the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in which volunteers from Como actively participate. The same is also done at St. Demetrius Church where a call center is active through which residents of neighboring villages, who cannot reach the city center, forward their requests. Families are then reached at home by Sister Olexia together with Ukrainian and Frontiers of Peace volunteers. The ambitious, completed project, a truckload for Kharkiv and Kherson, then began. "The turning point," Gianbattista Mosa continues, "was in February when two truckloads left from Maccio, thanks also to the collaboration of Caritas Diocesan, which reached precisely Kharkiv and Kherson. We volunteers followed, as has always happened, these trips to lend a hand and at the same time to be on the ground in the first person. Ten tons of food, as well as toys, were distributed in each of the cities. During our trips we meet people of all ages and collect testimonies that can then become documents to sensitize young people, but not only them, to the real situation being experienced in this country. In Kherson the collection and distribution center is the monastery of St. Volodymyr where there are Basilian fathers, from where supplies also leave for nearby villages. Kherson is a city that was first occupied then liberated, and the atmosphere there is that of a real battlefield, and unfortunately even today the hours are marked by the noise of the war still very close by." The road, Giambattista explains, is still long. "Absolutely. In the coming trips we will organize with vans transportation of food that will be delivered directly to the villages to all those families who do not have the possibility to reach the city. That is why our collection of food and medicine continues, which are the first needs at this time." info.frontieredipace@gmail.com