– Ben Lei
The 11th Genfest has concluded with sharing, joy and hope in Manila, the first non-European city to host this international youth gathering. Organized by Focolare Movement, Genfest 2018 was held from the 6th to the 8th of July under the theme “Beyond All Borders,” continuing and developing the 2012 theme “Let’s Bridge.”
Around 6,000 young people of different languages, cultures and religions from more than 100 countries gathered in the World Trade Centre of the energetic capital of the Philippines. Among them there were more than 100 people from Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The theme aimed to encourage the participants to go beyond all personal, social, political and interpersonal borders for the sake of universal fraternity. It is a response to all the conflicts and wars in the world.
The Genfest included all kinds of activities including life experience sharing from the young people all over the world, evening concerts, workshops, and social services. One of the most touching moments was the real life story sharing: Aziz fled from Iraq to France for a new life, a young man from Burundi was saved by his counterpart from Rwanda, young people from Catalonia and Spain exchanged their flags and hugs on the WTC stage in Manila even though they have different political understandings about their territories. All these experiences touched the hearts of every single participant in the venue.
Besides listening to the real life experience sharing, the participants were given opportunities to volunteer themselves in schools, parishes, and inner-city slums to understand the local poverty. A participant noted that children in Philippines can still be happy despite being poor and reflected on the quality of happiness and life in Hong Kong and Macau which are both considered as well-developed.
Participants from similar lingual or geographical regions performed every night. It included Chinese speakers from the nearby regions. One of the young participants, Cheng On Ki, stressed that by performing together on the same stage, the wall of political differences had been torn down. She felt very grateful for the performance and the loud applause from the audience.
Maria Voce, current President of Focolare Movement encouraged the youth to bring the experience of unity wherever they went. She concluded with a few words: Love, start again and share! She said, “Love is the secret for a life that is happy, full, interesting, always new, never boring and always surprising! Start again when problems, discouragement and failures overwhelm us and make our passion for a united world waver. Share our experiences, our joys, our difficulties, our talents and our goods.”
Voce recalled the challenge proposed by her predecessor Chiara Lubich: “To be men and women of unity, people who know how to carry in their hearts the specific treasures of each culture and give them to others: to be global men and women.”
On the closing day of Genfest, the Focolare Youth launched an ambitious project: “Pathways for a United World” to find ways and means of bringing individuals and people together to contribute building fraternal relationships in the fields of economy, justice, politics, environment, intercultural and interreligious dialogue. For more details about this initiative, please visit http://www.unitedworldproject.org/en/get-involved/pathways-for-a-united-world/
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