“As soon as I arrived here in February 2015,” Fr Cappelletti recalls, “I immediately realized the precarious housing situation in which the Salesians had been living for the past 10 years. An attic covered with zinc sheets with temperatures reaching 40 degrees during the day, an environment infested with bats, mice and spiders, where no human being deserves to live. In addition to this, as I learned about the reality little by little, I perceived how many boys and girls, who already normally live in unstructured families, without a decent home, were left to themselves,” he added.
Much attention has been paid to the Iauaretê project also because it represents an educational challenge in a place at the extreme cultural and geographical borders of our world. Fr Cappelletti was also a guest at the Christmas Concert in the Vatican in 2019 and the High School of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of Valdocco, also in 2019, dedicated a week of attention to this project to make it a training course for its students.
In Iauaretê they did not want to fix something, but to start, instead, a long-term process. Why Fr Cappelletti was a true architect of the new structure. The latter, explains Cappelleti: “is made up of 7 single rooms (4 for the Salesians present in the mission and 3 for volunteers, FMA and guests), 2 large dormitories (with a capacity of 30 hammocks each), a refectory with a capacity of up to 40 children, a kitchen, pantry, laundry, community room and room for activities with children. Each room will have an internal bathroom, the dormitories two bathrooms each. Outside there will be space to play and have fun.” Since its construction, the Salesian structure has been a beacon for directing the energies of the inhabitants towards prospects of redemption.
This House, as the missionary often recalls, is a dream cultivated for five years, fulfilled thanks to the help of "Missioni Don Bosco" and other charities and benefactors. Fr Cappelletti also wanted to emphasize the great work of Mr. Carlinhos Dias, the project's operational manager. "If a few drops of rain fall on the forest and on the new house in Iauaretê,” writes Missioni Don Bosco, “we can bet that it will be the tears of emotion of the Founding Father who sees his friendship grow with the Indios, protagonists of his missionary dream."
