Mission Fund’s New Year’s Day message

It has been a jolly season here at Mission Fund so far. We look forward to the New Year with new exciting prospects and live in the hope to be able to be more successful, to reach out to more people.

New Year – two words which according to the spell check are to be written with a capital first letter.

New Year’s Day – This one day, during which one strike on the clock and a change of one date brings such great hope to each individual; the hope for a new life, a change, an improvement in the day-to-day living. Like losing weight, quit smoking, save more money, making it to that one target; the hope to be one step closer to the dream.

Moreover, as the years roll by, commodity seems to be still at the top of the priorities’ list for us humans. We surround and distract ourselves with whatever latest gadget makes our lives easier.

What is shifting from sad to frightful is the fact that distractions seem to help us sleep easy at night. Even if the citizens of Aleppo are posting their final goodbyes on a Facebook video right before they die. Even after a little girl tweeted that her father had just been injured during an attack and she was afraid. Even though a man, a man before being a Somali, before being a migrant, before having problems, died alone under a bridge in the cold in Marsa, on our island. Alone!

Besides the glitter, the Christmas carols played ad nauseam, the money spent on food and presents, there is blood, there is the death of innocent people gone almost unnoticed because we are too distracted. Because, as we scroll on Facebook and come across the video of a young woman bidding farewell to the world, we think ‘what a pity’ and immediately scroll down to something else.

Someone, something, somewhere has to whack us to get up, face the reality of what is going on around us, and roll up our sleeves and do something positive about it. Humanity needs a wake-up call. Humanity needs to regain awareness and the ability to face fearlessly its own emotions, with feeling and empathy.

Our wishes at Mission Fund for the coming year are that we, as human beings turn our hopes into acts of kindness, that we finally stop scrawling on Facebook and act, for the love of human beings, just like us.

“If nothing saves us from death may love at least save us from life” – Pablo Neruda. Chantal Fenech The Mission Fund