Consultation Centres

Our work of prevention and awareness inevitably allows us to open consultation centres, meeting points for people we have already met. Most of people we meet at different gathering places, where they have fun at night, but they can transiently get in contact with some of our members, asking to meet some new friends more constantly, in order to share a confrontation and to start a friendship.

These centres often precede the opening of the welcoming facility and simultaneously continue their particularly useful service at this time of great social insecurity. They’re usually placed inside the property that houses the community, or inside a parish community or in autonomous buildings.

Our main activity is listening to people who access our community: they are mostly lonely, outcast, confused youngsters, who need to find someone willing to listen to their painful or confusing stories.

Thanks to our activities many youngsters access our centres, particularly those with drug problems or other forms of addiction; however, there are many requests from people who live any kind of discomfort.

Therefore, consultation centres represent an open service to the territory, primarily characterized by the following functions:

• Reception: They unconditionally accept the individuals as they are, without any sort of distinction or prejudice, being this the necessary first step towards a first effective communication;
• Listening: Thousands of workers - mostly volunteers - on behalf of the community are committed to carefully listen and “read” the tales full of suffering. The service may not necessarily be professional, but that comes from a mandate from the community;
• Orientation: The implicit and explicit messages of today’s society are often illusory and create expectations in people whom are then denied, increasing bewilderment and confusion: all faces full of suffering express the complexity of the issues that people live. Here is the urgent need of operators capable of listening with love and directing people towards positive solutions;
• Network connection: Social and religious community are two fundamental resources often overlooked for the solution to discomfort. The territory, full of resources and solidarity networks (if well known!) can become the best place to accompany people searching for answers.