Italy - ICC Civil Service Volunteers meet the "Wheelchair Thieves"
Italy - October 2023 - Two sessions were held from 17 to 27 October, one in Florence and the other in Genzano Rome, for the training of the Universal Civil Service Volunteers from the Salesian Central Italy (ICC) Province. The two sessions hosted a total of about 150 volunteers aged between 18 and 28, who are serving in various Salesian works in the eight regions which make up the ICC. On the last day, they were visited by the 'Ladri di Carrozzelle' (wheelchair thieves), a 30-year-old Italian musical group known for being made up mainly of artists with disabilities. Paolo Falessi, their founder and former pupil of the Salesian Oratory in Frascati, spoke about how during his Civil Service in the Salesian Borgo ragazzi Don Bosco Oratory in Rome, in the early 1990s, his musical adventure took shape. Over the years, the group has released countless albums and performed thousands of concerts at important national and international events, as well as appearing on television programmes. Paolo Falessi invited the young people present to treasure, as he has always done in his life, three characteristics of Don Bosco: to be able to dream big, to believe in the potential of young people and to apply the preventive system.