"Richard of Summer" 2022 Summer camp in Colonnata in the name of taking care of creation

This year we had the opportunity to carry out the summer camp, even if with a reduced time of about fifteen days, just to meet the demands of the parents of the children who attend our school.

The response to their needs, immediately after the last day when the school year just ended, it was possible to concretize it with the help and providential presence of two of our sisters of the Province Mary Immaculate, Sister Federica with her two children from the family home in Frosinone and Sister Annabel.

The time we are living stimulates us to take care of the safeguard of creation as Pope Francis invites us: “All forms of life are interconnected, and our health depends on that of the ecosystems that God has created and entrusted to us to care for. Instead, abusing it, is a grave sin that damages, harms and makes sick”.

Reflecting on this reality, we wanted to involve children in order to respond together to this challenge, or rather to our responsibility to care for our common home and to be guardians of creation. We were inspired by a movie "LORAX" - the guardian of the forest that is "the smartest"; it is a nice story about the wolf of the forest. This was the starting point to program all the activities with songs, games, dances and artistic expressions in order to sensitize children to respect for creation through exploration and fun.

The message of this movie, that we wanted to convey to children, was to understand the importance of respect for nature, which, yesterday as well as today, is more and more likely to be devastated by people.

The first of July began the summer camp "Richard'Estate" with great enthusiasm of children and educators...

We started the first week with the story "The Smartest", a funny story, but at the same time it transmits a teaching on anger that is the result of failure when you want to deceive and prevail over others, and this harms us first. The games, songs and dances continued throughout the week and at the end,  the children became the protagonists of the show "The smartest", with the presence and participation of parents.

"Without trees life on Earth would be impossible”. It may seem like a banal phrase but it is reality. Plant species, in fact, provide the essential oxygen to our existence and are at the same time an essential part of the food and livelihood chain of the ecosystem."

... but if people continue to cut down trees, or really burn them, we should resort, as in the film Lorax, to invent fake trees and consequently polluted air.

The activities of the second week had as theme "To nature we will not say goodbye... if the seed will grow" to make children understand how important it is to take care of trees and nature. On this movie, we have carried out various activities such as: "Let’s pretend that..." in which children have ventured into a dramatization in which they pretended to be first seeds, which then cared for and watered became trees. However, people do not always respect them... pollution, poisons and deforestation destroy trees, ... "but it does not work like that! Unless..." words of Lorax. And what do we do? ...

We wanted to stimulate in children the ability to imagine how they want to live and how to relate to nature: if they prefer fake trees and polluted air as in the movie, or real plants and clean air to breathe deeply.

As it happens for the environmental crisis, in all its current forms, it is real and really touches us closely, so also for the summer camp there was a special crisis, there were still three days to conclude it, when unfortunately we reached the Covid. We ended the summer camp with the trip to the Chico Mendes Park, without the possibility to greet us personally with the children. Let us make our own the words of Mother Teresa: "It is not so much what we do, but how much love we put into it. It is not so much what we give, but how much love we put into giving." 

To praise and glory of God!!!

The Sisters of the Community of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, Colonnata
together with Sister Federica and Sister Annabel