If not everything, much depends on our gaze.

On how we look at ourselves in the mirror and at those around us. On how we read the news, or whether we know how to be amazed by others' gestures, or how we manage to pick up on details that might otherwise escape us and yet — if brought properly into focus — would have the power to change our day.

Even in the time of the pandemic, or perhaps now more than ever.

For this reason, while we wait for calmer times, focusing on the reality around us, looking closely at the faces of those we meet and recognising what they need could become an interesting way of making it through to spring.

Avsi's tent campaign

This is the spirit behind Avsi's new grassroots campaign, the tent campaign, which at the start of a winter shaken by the pandemic and its social and economic impact — with implications so pervasive in our lives — invites us to "broaden our gaze." To open our eyes wider and recognise the needs of those beside us, just a few metres away, in our cities, but also a little further afield: those who are far away, across the sea or the ocean, yet who need concrete help — food, healthcare, schools, work. Just as we do now, in our own country.

The tent campaign is an awareness-raising and fundraising campaign, but above all it is a way of creating networks of solidarity that can hold together and keep standing a country divided into regions of different colours, with different rhythms of life.

The dossiers being compiled on Italy speak of a growing number of "new poor" — people who, having lost their jobs, have fallen among those who cannot make ends meet and need help to support their children and cover household expenses. Those basic, daily concerns that can leave you breathless, and for which the material need is often accompanied by a need for psychological support, guidance towards the recovery of economic independence and beyond.

The countries involved

This year the tent campaign will start from an Italy particularly hard hit by the pandemic, before extending to Mexico, Lebanon, Burundi, Cameroon and Syria: it proposes working on our gaze in order to draw closer to the most vulnerable. As if the measure of solidarity could bring borders nearer, reduce distances, and allow closeness even at a time when the virus imposes metres of separation between us, one from another, to prevent contagion. In each of these countries, projects are under way to support the new poor (in Italy), to receive migrant minors (in Mexico), to provide job training and support for women and young people (in Burundi), to give the poorest free access to healthcare (in Syria), and to support children's education (in Lebanon) through remote sponsorship.

In this invitation to broaden our gaze and draw closer to those in need, a new way of understanding proximity comes into view: one that is not measured in metres, but in the substance of a personal relationship — between an I and a you — and in the drive to make oneself available and try to be of help, of comfort. Whether towards people living nearby, in our own city, or on the other side of the world.

A meaningful proximity because it opens the door to hope — both for those who receive help and for those who give it. And in this time of pervasive uncertainty, hope is an essential commodity for everyone.