Italian students to spend vacation helping earthquake survivors

Around one hundred university students from all over Italy will come together for a week in Abruzzo, Italy, to study economic ethics and work as volunteers in the tent camps set up for those who have lost their homes in the earthquake.

The event is part of the 51st Summer School "College of Humanities and Science" (CHUMS), promoted by the Rui Foundation, July 23-31. The opening ceremony will take place Saturday, 25 July in L'Aquila, as 10am, at the Aula Magna of the Reiss Romoli Higher Learning Centre. The Summer School will officially be inaugurated by Guido Bertolaso, Undersecretary of the President of the Council, Extraordinary Commissioner for the Abruzzo Emergency.

The participants are university students from all over Italy, especially Sicily, Calabria, Lazio, Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Veneto, and Abruzzo. Many of them attend the cultural centers and universities with spiritual activities linked to the Prelature of Opus Dei. The students have chosen Abruzzo as the destination of their annual gathering, to be near their companions and share in the difficulties that have come as a result of the earthquake, taking advantage of the summer time to study and reflect on current affairs, uniting it to concrete support of the people struck by the quake.

The program for the Summer School calls for morning seminars and group workshops, and in the afternoon, volunteer activities for the elderly and young children, with catch-up programs for the children who have not returned to school since April 6. The university students will especially dedicate time to the elderly of the RSA in Fontecchio (a residence for 110 people with various illnesses, in a difficult situation of solitude worsened by health problems) and children from San Felice D'Ocre, with a school recuperation program.

Source: Fides