31 October 2025
“The gaze of the Meeting can truly generate goodness in the world.” Michele, 21, has no doubt about it. He studies aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan, just like Pietro, who is a year younger. Together, they took part in the volunteer work at the Pre-Meeting, laying and assembling cables and, above all, building friendships. They are “Faces that build.”
“This is my second year participating, and both times I worked as an electrician. This year, we worked at the Youth Village: in the first days, setting up the electrical system, then helping out wherever needed. When we finished our main task, we made ourselves available. There was painting to do, tables to arrange, helping the students from the Brera Academy. And we did it with joy,” says Pietro. “It was tiring work, but beautiful. We followed the instructions of Roberto, an electrician from Verona, and every evening I came home exhausted but happy. I would choose to spend my vacation week this way again in a heartbeat. I’d love to come back next year,” adds Michele.
The Pre-Meeting experience was not only about work, but also deeply human. Pietro was struck by “the gaze of the adults — seeing how carefully and attentively they built things. Even when we thought we were done, they encouraged us to do better, to make everything more beautiful. There was a desire for perfection that didn’t come from anxiety, but from love for what we were creating.” Behind every hidden cable, every light carefully placed, he sensed a greater meaning. “Our work might have seemed ‘useless,’ because the lights are there and visible anyway, but in reality, we were helping to make the Meeting more beautiful, more welcoming. It was as if, by setting up the lights, we were preparing the space for something greater.”
Michele deepens the theme of “discovery through doing.” “During a testimony, the president of the Meeting, Bernhard Scholz, said that as we grow up, we discover that the common good can coincide with personal good. That’s exactly what I experienced there: doing something for the Meeting, for a good greater than myself, made me happy.”
That joy was born from a simple, concrete friendship. “At one point, there was a bit of competition between two groups working together, because we came from different universities. Our supervisor looked at us and said: ‘Here, we’re all friends. If we want this to turn out well, we need to be united.’ In the following days, those words really came true. It was wonderful,” they recall.
For Michele, the Meeting has always been a point of reference. “I’ve been going since I was little — first with my family, then with friends. It’s a place I return to every year for the talks, the exhibitions, but also for the companionship. It always amazes me to see how a certain gaze on reality can generate so much good — in culture, in politics, in mission.”
Looking at the world, they recognize something rare in the Meeting. “It’s a place where there’s room for everyone. Anyone can contribute — you don’t need any special skill. In a time when dialogue seems to be disappearing, here we experience a unity that is possible, real,” they emphasize.
For Michele and Pietro, supporting the Meeting is a gift. “It’s a week when the world can meet again, when peace reigns from nine in the morning until midnight.” And not only that... “Donating to the Meeting means allowing more people to live an experience that can change them. I wish those who don’t yet know it could experience it — the more the Meeting grows, the more it broadens horizons, the more good it does.”
