The partnership works

Every third Wednesday of the month, the COEMM groups in Udine hold their “salotto”

– a meeting to exchange ideas, reflect, discuss and take action. This time the setting and the programme were different from usual.

Instead of meeting as usual in the Zarra family’s living room, members of Group 5 came together with “soci” (members) of other groups – of which there are 29 in Udine – at an agriturismo (comparable to our Austrian Heurigen wine taverns) in the municipality of Moruzzo near Udine. A marquee had been put up specially, and there were two items on the programme:

• an introduction to the partner association GAIA in Austria (as well as Switzerland and Germany)
• a renewed presentation of COEMM’s main project, the fight against poverty in its own country

Gottlieb Rössler, a founding member, and I from the GAIA Lungau group introduced GAIA briefly, concisely and clearly, and were rewarded with plenty of applause.

The talk on the anti-poverty project set out the causes of poverty, such as the banking and monetary system, the inhumane goings-on in politics and the helplessness, or inability, of the population to stick together. An ideal world was sketched out along with the project’s goals. Unfortunately, there is a lot of resistance from the ranks of the castes mentioned above, and still considerable ignorance among the public about COEMM’s work. The work goes on carefully and steadily. And we can only hope and wish that in the end success will come in the form of victory over poverty.

COEMM’s Secretary General phoned in and had the course of the evening reported to him. And since it also happened to be his birthday that day, those present gave him a fitting ovation. The evening was also filmed for television.

And, much as with the GAIA Lungau group, there was then an Italian buffet with the finest produce from the farm. A smaller circle celebrated with the hosts until well after midnight, and the feeling of belonging together was almost palpable.