"Global Friendship for a Future of Peace". This is the desire of 1000 young people, high school students and university students, from 13 European countries who will gather in Padua and Venice from 25 to 27 August for the International Meeting of Youth for Peace. It is a movement linked to the Community of Sant'Egidio, every day working in the suburbs to help children in difficulty, the homeless and elderly people, and during the summer months organising solidarity holidays with refugees in camps in Greece and Cyprus.
It will be a great European event for peace, so significant at a time marked by the terrible war in Ukraine. Indeed, it is precisely from Ukraine - where Sant'Egidio continues to support the population with the distribution of food and medical supplies and has opened educational centres for children and young people, also thanks to the support of many refugees who have joined the Community in its humanitarian work - that 70 youth from Kiev, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk will come to Veneto.
Together with their peers from other European countries, they will express their generation's hopes for peace and discuss crucial issues - ecology, migration, poverty - in order to spread a culture of solidarity and integration.
Friday's opening day will begin with a talk by Mario Giro, former Italian deputy foreign minister, on "Global Youth: understanding our complex world" and end with a prayer vigil for peace presided over by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian Bishops' Conference and Pope Francis' special envoy to Ukraine. On Saturday morning, participants will take part in a meeting with Marco Impagliazzo, President of the Community of Sant'Egidio, on the theme "Everything can change". The event will end on Sunday afternoon in Venice with a flash mob for peace in St Mark's Square.
