Dedicated to Cristian who with his letter wrote to us:
<<The Lord God, in order to help you, you must pray every night before sleeping this beautiful prayer ... "Our Father who are in heaven ..." >>.
In short, a small orphan from the dark period of the Romanian dictatorship who teaches us, perhaps non-believers, how to ask for help from the Infinite.
A chain long ... thirty years
November 1989, the Berlin Wall collapses and the USSR is in deep crisis. In the following months, a small group of Parmesans operated two humanitarian expeditions in the post- Ceaușescu disaster in Romania (the only country in the Soviet bloc with a bloody revolution).
Autumn 1990 (First Ring): a strange letter arrives in Parma, with a very messy address. It bears a stamp that reads: "CORRESPONDENCIA MAL ENCAMINADA IN PANAMA". It is understood that to get to Parma this letter passed through Panama. Around the world, because it comes from a small town in Romania, exactly from the orphanage of Gavojdia where the small group of Parmesans had left a business card, collected by a 12-year-old boy who very politely writes with uncertain and confused handwriting: << Dear Sir, the good Lord has helped us to know us. My name is Cristian and please come and visit me when you can. If possible I would like a small radio, ... >>.
December 1990 (Second Ring): the small group of Parmesans, gets a little bigger and goes back on the road; it arrives at the orphanage and tracks down little Cristian, bringing the little radio and many other toys for everyone but discovering a situation that upsets them. The children are piled up in dirty rooms; the stench emanating from the bedrooms and bathrooms is unbearable. The children are thin and barefoot. It is something that is hard to believe. It is when we have seen such a thing that ... the world must change.
Since 1991 (Third Ring): year after year the small group of friends becomes less and less and stops devoting evenings on TV and armchairs on Sundays to collect, clean and fix toys. Why toys? Because if Uncle McCartney hadn't given Paul a guitar, we wouldn't have had the Beatles. Because it is from a game, if intelligent and instructive, that a passion, an interest, a future profession can be born. Because games have been important in our life and they can be for many children. For many future men. For those men, now children, on whom our own future will depend. Maybe to prevent those children from going to thicken the ranks of unfortunate and delinquents (who twenty years earlier were children that nobody cared about, sigh!).
It is therefore from that child of the letter finished in Panama that a postman angel had redirected to Parma, that a chain of many links began to unfold, year after year more solid, which led to the organization of many humanitarian aid trucks; not only games but also various household goods that would have fattened the landfill in Italy but that we have repaired and recycled, making thousands of families happy. Families who have received parcels prepared with the scent of the affection of distant and unknown friends but linked by human brotherhood. The "brotherhood between families" takes the place of the enjoyment "twinning between municipalities".
May 2008: always thanks to Cristian - first link in the chain and now an adult - we arrive in Brădet where the "small group of Parmesans (no smaller and with many non-Parmesans) restructures, awakening local forces, a horrible school that - with ingenuity and will - it has become one of the most beautiful and gifted in the Caras-Severin region, in which we now operate!
But, dear Asociația Il Giocattolo, you still have a lot to do to add more links to the chain.