Blog

by Renato Burigana

Gianluca Mengozzi was recently reappointed for a second term as spokesperson of the Tuscan Forum of the Third Sector, which represents 9,750 organizations in the territory including volunteers, social promotion associations, and social cooperatives. Mengozzi, president of ARCI Toscana since 2011, is an architect who specializes in restoration and has been appointed several times to research and teach at the Department of Architecture at the University of Florence. He has participated in international solidarity interventions abroad, including long stays in Lebanon and Syria. After the August 4 explosion, he immediately mobilized to help the people of Beirut.

• President you know the Middle East very well, you have lived in Lebanon where ARCI has some important projects. How do you see and experience the situation in the Land of the Cedars?

"I have always thought that Lebanon was a mirror in which Italy and Italians can look at themselves to get to know each other better. In fact, Italy shares with Lebanon many of the contradictions of society, the fact of having been for many years a frontier between blocs and political universes, the vulnerability due to geographical location, the fact of being a gateway for those who want to enter Asia or Europe. I think we should all always remember to be grateful to Lebanon for the very great contribution it has made to European civilization: the people of this small strip of land brought us as a gift the tools with which the history of the Mediterranean was built, the alphabet, navigation, trade. It is amazing, frequenting Lebanon, how much affection the people have for the Italians. I have tried many times to ask friends and colleagues what is the reason for this feeling of esteem and sympathy. One of the answers I have had most often, besides the sympathy given by common history and culture, is that "Italy has never left us alone, and in return for their solidarity the Italians have never asked us for anything." These are important words that we should think about carefully. Especially now that Lebanon has been back for at least two years in an extremely complex situation. The Lebanese population, articulated in a colorful and multifaceted mosaic of religious faith and membership in different cultural traditions, is a population that wants peace. The representation that is sometimes made of them, namely that of a people with weapons in every home and always ready for military confrontation, is not only false but deeply unfair. Like any other people, the Lebanese want to enjoy life, nurture their affections, live according to their traditions, always open, as they have been for millennia, to exchange and relate with different cultures. After living through the long years of a fierce civil war waged by foreign powers, the marks of which still remain on some buildings in Beirut or Tripoli, and after the 2006 clash with Israel, Lebanese democracy sought a way to assert its will for peace. The great explosion at the port of Beirut, with its bring of death and destruction, brought into sharp relief the gravity of the economic and political situation. This small country has been home to more than one million Syrian refugees since 2011. I often remind those who cry of an invasion of Italy for a few landings of desperate people fleeing hunger and war that made the proportions compared to the Lebanese population, it is as if we were hosting 20 million refugees in Italy, and not the few thousand currently on our territory. Then, since 2019, a financial crisis has erupted that has dramatically devalued the Lebanese lira, with a very strong loss of purchasing power for families. In the face of this, amid continuing instability induced by the war in Syria and recurring military crises between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, the Lebanese political class seems unable to find the resolve to give the country a solid government through a stable national pact. Recently added is the difficulty on the part of the authorities to ensure continuity in water and electricity supply. The Lebanese people are serious, open and hardworking, and they do not deserve this. The international community must take action to alleviate the consequences of this situation, especially for the most vulnerable sections of society. Italy must make its voice heard. But it must be done now, immediately. The images that recently appeared in the media, showing Beirut plunged into unreal darkness due to the lack of fuel to power the power plants, call everyone to immediate action.

• After the explosion you promoted together with ARCI, John Paul II Foundation, Heart Melts Foundation and the University of Florence a project to restore the historic Franciscan convent in Beirut as a sign of closeness for what had happened. Where are we with that project?

"In the days following the explosion at the port of Beirut many of us wondered what we could do. In Tuscany, the Heart Melts Foundation, with the great capacity for vision that distinguishes it, immediately took action by calling the John Paul II Foundation and Arci Toscana to a table at which to think about what was needed. The choice fell on supporting the situation of post-traumatic distress of the youngest children, the relief of their homeless families, and the need to ensure continuity in school, education and the possibility of playing. Alongside these issues, however, there also emerged the possibility of giving an important signal on the preservation of the historical and monumental heritage of the Lebanese capital affected by the explosion, and it came naturally to all of us to think of the Franciscan convent, which suffered very serious damage. This is why we involved the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence and DiaCon, a university spin-off of high specialization in diagnostics and restoration of historic buildings. This initiative had a lot of media coverage and in Italy it was particularly appreciated by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, who felt they could develop this idea by sending a team of technicians to Lebanon to work with the Lebanese authorities on the preservation of historic buildings. Unfortunately, the reignition of the pandemic in October 2020 prevented the exchange mission of Tuscan researchers to Beirut. However, meetings were held remotely in which suggestions emerged for securing the Convent's structures to prevent increasing deterioration of the historic structures. Now the buildings of the monumental complex can safely face the bad season without fears of further degradation. A digital survey of the entire convent area was then carried out: in fact, the goal is to create a fully digitized and navigable project-framework to be presented, together with an intervention project, to those who will finance the integral restoration operations. No aspect has been overlooked in the assessments, from the stained glass windows decorated with figures of saints ripped out by the shock wave, to the roof, the structures of the terraces, and finally the historic garden, one of the few green areas in the historic center, which is also awaiting rehabilitation. As soon as it is possible, and hopefully soon, a mission will be carried out to proceed with the work started so far. I believe that on this occasion, once again, the John Paul II Foundation and Arci Toscana, together with the Fondazione il Cuore si Scioglie, have succeeded in putting in place a virtuous path of pragmatic and factual relationship, succeeding in solving real problems.

• Tuscany is a land of collaboration and solidarity with its thousand circles, parishes, associations and some Foundations that have always been committed to the Middle East. How do you see volunteerism after these months when we have not been able to have meetings and in-person meetings?

"During these very long months of the pandemic, it has been impossible to meet, gather and do community activities such as those that our collective organizations have been proposing to their social body for decades. It has been a great hardship, the relief of which is only now, as vaccinations proceed, being felt. The hundreds of thousands of women and men who volunteer every day in the many Tuscan associations and foundations that animate the civic life of our communities have risked seeing a successful and impactful mode of social action challenged. There has undoubtedly been bewilderment, sometimes anguish, over a situation without comparison. Never before, except in wars, had we had such a situation. Think of what it meant not to be able to get together, not to be able to engage in conviviality to raise funds, not to be able to dance, put on shows, do culture, and get together around a table. Think of what this has meant for the younger and the elderly, forced into a loneliness amplified by the fear of contagion. Now our task is to convey to the citizenry the feeling that it is possible to find ourselves in safety, that by sticking to the rules it is possible to start again, that the worst is over. This will also serve us to reenergize solidarity relations with the Middle East, organize meetings, opportunities for information, social animation on the issues that afflict countries and peoples friendly to Tuscany. It is not a matter of reknitting broken threads, because solidarity has remained alive even in these very difficult months, and many of the current activities of aid and collaboration have been transformed into pandemic-fighting activities to help the most vulnerable population. But now is the time to regain the fullness and effectiveness of activities soon, and fight that feeling that we sometimes hear, partly fueled by thoughtless messages, that in times of pandemic we cannot afford to help those who are sick, that we should not look outside the confines of our homes. We must continue to say that the opposite is true: we must express at the highest level the great strength of solidarity of which the Tuscan community is capable, look up beyond the little garden around our homes, and seek the eyes of those from the Middle East who are still waiting to feel the solidarity of our handshake and the warmth of our embrace. From crises we all come out together, we must not leave anyone behind, we must take care of dear peoples and brothers who suffer the current situation much more than we do. We must do this, because our consciences and societies will also benefit from this solidarity action."

• Covid has challenged many countries in the world, what can we do concretely from Tuscany? And how to overcome the fears we have toward the other, toward the foreigner?

"We must first induce in our society, in the many sensitive people who animate the Tuscan community, the reflection that the pandemic had different effects on countries depending on the starting situation with which nations entered the health crisis. The pandemic did not have the same effects in Italy, among the world's major economic powers, or in Lebanon and Syria. To deny this truth would be unfair and cruel to countries whose population faced the spread of the disease in a situation of very severe economic and military crisis. Associations, foundations, must create bridges of empathy, must ensure that any citizen can identify with those who are experiencing the pandemic without health tools, without the hope given by functioning and public hospitals or mass vaccination. And understand that those who flee those situations of desperation by seeking refuge for themselves and their families are doing something we would all do under the same conditions, because surviving and having loved ones survive is a motion that unites all humankind, without exclusion of anyone. We must help these countries strengthen their capacities to respond to the pandemic, ensure that they are able to vaccinate without lingering in selfish attitudes, knowing that viruses cross borders and that those who made the short-sighted choice to close themselves within the perimeter of their own state had no beneficial effect. Then we must welcome those who flee, and counter precisely the distrust, the fear, feelings amplified by the feeling of vulnerability induced by the state of crisis. We must then be realistic and aware that there are social sectors, fortunately a minority, that fan the fire of distrust of the foreigner in order to gain small advantages from fear. This representation must be opposed by another, made up of truth and hard data, which breaks the ties of fearful feelings in which people who have less access to objective information sometimes remain knotted. To inform, to make people see situations as they really are, to inspire feelings of solidarity and international community are primary tasks of large popular organizations such as foundations and associations, organizations that animate and make the Tuscan community unique."