– Jasmin Yiu
The Focolare Movement Community in Macau and Macau Diocesan Social Communications Centre invited “Gen Verde” to host a three-day workshop on July 18 to 20, with an evening concert on July 21 to end the whole programme. Sally McAllister, Tour Director of Gen Verde, shared with O CLARIM and CDMCS the mission of the workshops and concert, as well as Gen Verde’s relationship with Focolare Movement.
We all know the background of Gen Verde. In brief, can you explain more of the mission of the event, including the workshops and performance?
The goal is to communicate something of our faith, and to use the medium of the arts as a means. The young people who come and do these workshops have and will receive a very good grounding in music, drama, and singing or whatever it is. Our faith is communicated by people living together, and that is a very gospel based idea. Jesus himself said come and see, so we hope that these young people who are doing these workshops, will go away with the sense of hope and the sense of joy.
You came to Macau in 2016. How is this year’s theme different from the one of two years ago?
The theme of this workshop in Macau is on peace, unity and dialogue. We travel all over the world and the young people we meet are all very different yet the challenges they face are very similar. I notice in most of the time, there is lack of self-worth, a lack of belief. Young people live in fear. What is the point in committing to a relationship? My parents’ relationship fell apart. We hope that young people would have the experience that if they can be different in these five days of the workshops, then things can also be different later, they will take away hope.
In what ways can the workshop fit each society or even every youth?
these workshops are tailor-made to every group we go to. So we would go in on the first day, assess what they can do, and then we will change our plans, to make sure that they bring out the best from these young people. Chiara Lubich, the foundress of the Focolare Movement, said that “you need to make yourself one with the other, you need to be a person who is able to get into the skin of the other person, to be in their shoes and to see how they are living, what are their challenges, and be alongside them.” That’s what we want to be. We want to be alongside these young people as companions.
Other than some basic technical trainings, what other added-value that could be given to the youth through this programme? What do you expect the youth to gain after participating this programme and applicable into the life?
My hope would be that young people doing this [workshop] will go away with the sense that “change can begin with me. I can be different.”
There are lots of experiences, but in the concert, there is a song called Break the chain and that is my story. It talks about the chain of violence, of everything, I have to be the one who break them in me, and then peace will spread. So that’s the kind of thing we do, we do talk about [the faith] more explicitly in the concert as well.
Do you think young people are more selfish than in the past?
No, I don’t. I think that’s a great myth. If you look back over time, you know people are always harping back to golden era, but you know what, it never existed. Because young people in the past were selfish in some ways, and some young people today are selfish in other ways. All people are. Do people have greater challenges? I think they do. Because you see in the past, I think young people grew up with greater security, because very many young people grew up with a security of a family. Thinking of my own experience, my mother was widowed very young, and so we grew up and we didn’t have a lot of money. However, we had security, because our mum loved us. And there was something solid. And I think a lot of young people don’t have that today. So in the shifting sands of today’s world, yes I think they do have challenges.
Macau and Hong Kong lacking these kind of training for youth. Is there any plan to visit Asia more frequently in the future? Or any other plan to incorporate with other Christian communities?
I think that would be a truly wonderful thing, as I said, it’s not just giving young people the tools to be better singers or musicians or actors, but to give them sort of values that would be useful for ever aspects of their life. Would we like to do that? We would love to do that, we would like to develop our programme.
How about people of other faiths?
We do not pretend to be anything different. We do witness our faith. We are open to them, we don’t try to push anything. But we had some amazing experiences. When we went to London last time, we had an evening at the Islamic centre of Great Britain, and they are and there are very [traditionally ordered] women are clothed, and men do not shake hands with women, they don’t listen to music…so when the leader of that organization, who is a great friend of Focolare said “we would love you to come to the Islamic centre.” I said “I don’t know how to say this to you, but what would we do because all our things are about [music].” And he said “just let’s dialogue.” So we listen to them, and we listen to real pain of some Islamerics are experiencing, because they are not terrorists, these are young people who believe in God and want to live for God. It’s important for them as well we are people of faith, they are people of faith, and we respect one another. But of course we are true to our own faith, that is no doubt.
The coming Synod will be on the youth …
First of all, isn’t Pope Francis fantastic! There he is, he supports young people and family, he meets them in their difficulties, and he challenges them. He doesn’t only comfort them. He sets them an ideal, but he is very pastoral because he knows that we are weak that we fall, so he encourages us. I think the Holy Father is listening to young people, that’s the first message, and I think that is what we all have to do, and to support young people and families, above all the families in difficulties. We can support them before they get into difficulties, but whatever the pastoral needs, to be alongside and to help them, to come out of their difficulties they are in.
What makes you overcome these difficulties in your apostolate, without showing them in front of the young people?
No hesitation, it’s our life. There will be no point for us going on stage and preaching a message of unity, peace and dialogue if we did not live it first among ourselves. So for example, for us something very important is our prayer life. It’s our life together. We travel all over the world but we know that either there is a strong foundation; or [if] there is nothing, we have nothing to give. We will very soon be running on empty if we don’t do that (prayer), so we use all our opportunities. Even though we are tired after the workshops, we don’t just go to bed directly, we still need to ask one another on how it’s going, and then we pray together. So it’s our life of unity and of prayer.
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