Campaign of the Province of Central Mexico against the coronavirus emergency
Faced with the untimely appearance of the Coronavirus Covid-19 in Mexico, a group made up of young workers (long-stay volunteers) who were forced to return to their homes because of the emergency, school teachers and members of the Provincial Mission Team, asked ourselves some questions:
– How can we promote fraternity and solidarity in this time of health emergency in a context that forces us to stay at home?
– How can we show solidarity with those whose needs for family subsistence are inevitably affected or how support populations in situations of greater vulnerability?
With these concerns, starting from observation and listening to different contexts, we locate experiences, contact institutions and imagine possible actions around which we can invite the works of the Province to make progress. This is how the provincial campaign came about, which proposes 7 ways of promoting solidarity in this time of pandemic, called “SOLIDARITY WITHOUT QUARANTINE”: protect them, take care of them, help them, support them, inform them, be creative, join them.
The objective of the campaign is to promote and articulate with them pertinent actions of fraternity and solidarity, inside and outside the Marist works, in this time of medical contiguity with the COVID-19, as much for the stage of quarantine as for the post-quarantine. In the same way, it seeks to pay for and add to the proposals carried out individually, as a family and as Marist works.
On the web site Solidarity without quarantine, initiatives are proposed for each of the 7 areas. Some of these are:
– Dissemination of infographics and videos that help prevent the spread of the virus.
– Collaboration with institutions that work with populations in a situation of vulnerability, in order to channel support to satisfy immediate needs. Priority groups: indigenous boys and girls; abused children living in homes; girls at risk on the streets, shelters for migrant and refugee populations; homes for the elderly; families in marginal areas.
– Support for the health system, channelling protective materials for health professionals; promotion of a culture of greater self-care, through food and exercise The coronavirus in Mexico has made more evident the fragility of the population to get sick from it, as well as from other diseases, given the high rate of obesity at all ages.
– Creation and adhesion to the Marist Network of Family Commerce in a rationale of mutual support, some offering services of quality and fair price, others consuming them; diffusion of local networks of businesses and services.
– Making available resources for emotional care and spiritual nutrition.
The campaign is dynamic in so far as it is open to the works being able to continue to add initiatives and propose the articulation of efforts.
In the month of the feast of the feast of Marcellin Champagnat and wanting to be faithful heirs of his charism, we ask our Good Father to allow us as a Marist community to be beacons of hope and to live in solidarity without quarantine.
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María Del Socorro Álvarez Noriega – Provincial Solidarity Team
