Fondazione San Zeno
Rita Ruffoli
Director
Here we are, at the end of the year after, 2022.
This year has shown the first signs of recovery, a general feeling of returning to and restarting from, and at the same time of opening new paths. We’re all different, now less frightened, stronger and yet not tense due to the suspended time which brought us all here: to the moment after.
During this readjustment phase, we spontaneously sought our balance and a bit of comfort in the modalities which sounded most familiar, lulling ourselves into what we thought we knew, slowly realising how very deeply we’ve all changed.
The simplicity with which one tries to do one’s best, with the slight fear that everything could once again become discombobulated. Emotions that are still insecure, treading lightly, whispered ideas and a lot of listening.
In the silence of our practice, we’ve concentrated on what motivates us since the beginning of our Foundation’s story: to provide concrete opportunities for change.
We’ve always tried to look at things from a different perspective, not to stop at the mere here and now. In order to do this, the approach which comes most naturally to us is to speak with people, to understand what’s going on, to get to the basic facts even if only to get to know them.
This year we’ve felt an even stronger need to look beyond, to read reality without the filters of past schemes. We’ve thus been able to fund new requests and, mostly, to listen to new responses. This is why we decided to continue entering people’s spaces, those that people must necessarily enter.
Areas of urban marginality, dark roads, forgotten schools, remote villages, silent communities and prisons. We’ve ventured out into non-physical areas, areas in which the soul lacks perspective, areas in which the fire has gone out, areas of personal abandonment, of intimate defeat, of non-belonging.
And in all these areas we’ve been told “Nobody ever comes here”. Here is the area, both physical and human, in which we’ve decided to listen to those who never ask to be heard. In order to turn the light on again and to look.
Because it is through those grey cracks that great resources come through.
It only takes knowing how to see them.
Rita Ruffoli
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