A group of young Californians fundraise for Lebanon
Even though it was 7,388 miles away — even from halfway across the world — we in California felt the impact of the explosion at the port of Beirut because we had family and friends in Lebanon. It’s a country that was already undergoing a socioeconomic and political crisis amid the Covid-19 pandemic. We wanted to help.
Especially during these trying times, we’ve been trying to understand how we, the West Coast chapter of Youth for a United World (Y4UW) — could come together and collaborate with our community to add color to our world.
One of the unexpected blessings of the stay-at-home orders is that we’ve connected with each other more consistently. Our once occasional conference calls have become a weekly gathering on Zoom.
In the meeting among the boys, we thought of launching a social media campaign to raise awareness about this year’s goal, called the DareToCare Pathway to encourage active citizenship. We wanted to help people see the value of politics as a tool for unity.
At the same time, after the meeting among the girls, focused on learning more about the Focolare practice called “communion of goods,” they decided to organize a fundraiser to benefit Lebanon, and they invited us to work together.
We worked out that we could host a paint night entitled Paint It Forward, as a play on words of the phrase “pay it forward.” It was fitting because we wanted to leverage our resources and talents to help those in need. One of us is an artist and offered a class on oil painting via Zoom for a donation fee.
We were unsure about how things would play out, but we believed that if we were united in our work, then we could achieve something notable.
And we were blessed with a positive turnout. We received over $1,800, which will be wired to Azione per un Mondo Unito (AMU), an organization providing support to the families in Lebanon that were affected by the recent tragedy.
Paint It Forward has even inspired other regions to mobilize! The next is entitled “Baking for Beirut,” hosted by the Southern U.S. chapter of the Y4UW.
After this experience, I’m reminded that it is only together that we can achieve what we cannot do alone — build a more united world.
Josef Capacio, California
2020