OMG

The OMG keeps us, first of all, remember that for "operation Mato Grosso" isn't much to read but it is preferable to know directly the lives of people who are giving away years of his life to the poor and the young.

THE STORY

In October 1964 arrives in Italy Father Pedro Meles that, after ten years on mission in Brazil, speaks of the plight of his people and the difficulties he encounters in his work in Mato Grosso (interior region of Brazil on the border with Bolivia).

The summer camps of the Val Formazza, Don Luigi, brother of don Piero, along with don Ugo De Censi (Salesian Father who becomes the guide of the OMG) launched the idea of a youth missionary expedition in Mato Grosso. The goal was to offer a service in humility to the brethren of Poxoreo Mission (Mato Grosso), making thus the concrete promise a few years earlier by father Hugh to father Pedro Meles to go find it.

In 1967 it was the first expedition to Brazil. They talked about the newspapers and the radio. The guys built a youth centre in Brazil Poxoreo. The construction ended, some remained. Other returned the following year to finish the work. There were other requests by missionaries of Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru.

Thus was born the operation Mato Grosso.

The first juvenile expedition in Brazil, started almost as an adventure, it drew little by little a movement, the nature of which has been carried out in the hole while being cleared through a gradual maturation and later linked to people's lives.

WHAT IS

The OMG is a nationwide movement aimed especially at young people, which aims to work for free for the poorest. Through this commitment, they begin an educational journey that leads them to discover and acquire some fundamental values to their lives: fatigue, work, social commitment, consistency between words and life, the group, respect and collaboration with others, sensitivity and attention to the problems of the poorest, trying to learn to love.

Any young can join the OMG without preclusions neither religious nor ideological. Although born in Salesian environment, in fact, the movement has always defined nondenominational, just to indicate this opening: anyone can actually do something to help those who are worse than him. In this educational path each young man is free to enter and leave the Group at any time, constraints that are established are tied exclusively to the intensity of personal relationships, there are no governing bodies.

The OMG is the place where grow the vocation to love. "Enough with the small talk we come to facts", is the typical phrase. Do the charity is to look at the needs of others, trying to change before themselves; It means unleashing the poor without a new rich, making him understand that there is always someone who is poorer than he was.

The groups of children (average age 16-25 years) get together and work in his spare time to raise the necessary funds to finance human development activities that volunteers play in Latin America. Through this commitment, we start an educational path leads to discover and acquire some important values to their lives: a sense of fatigue, free work, consistency between words and deeds, the sensitivity, the attention to the problems of the poorest, trying to learn to love and to give time and money to those who are less fortunate than us. We cannot go on living just putting ourselves at the center of world affairs. While our life becomes increasingly drab, hasty and full of unnecessary things, the poor are getting poorer.

The desperate cry and voiceless of the poorest, the difficulties of young people to orient themselves in life, hoping to discover a truer life push us to get out of the torpor and the comfort with which the present world we shut and there art keeps getting.

The structure of the movement is structured around two complementary dimensions between them:

the Italy, where there are numerous groups of children (about 1500 youth and families) who gather and work to raise the funds necessary for financing of activities carried out by volunteers in Latin American shipments. All volunteers offer their work and their availability in FREE form, through self-financed to devolve as completely as harvest work to shipments in Latin America.

The work of the boys manage to cover financially the majority of needs, the remainder of the funds collected through the aid of the families/friends of the volunteers, adult initiatives aimed at supporting individual projects, bids collected in parishes etc.

There are group discussions work constantly during the week (painting, decorating, card collections in stores, cleaning stairs of apartment blocks, sgomberi\traslochi, cleaning and maintaining gardens, firewood cutting ...) and work camps held on weekends and during holiday periods; the fields together young people from different groups and are more challenging jobs (construction, agriculture, shelter, large collections management paper, rags, iron, accommodation paths and mountain huts); the fields are the occasion of comparison and reflection can deepen their motivation and to learn about the experiences and the missionary work by listening for volunteers returning from Latin America.

the Latin America, where there are numerous "missions" or "expeditions" (more than 80) where OMG volunteers (young people, families, priests) serve for the poor in areas particularly depressed and isolated of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Are interventions in education (agricultural schools, professional schools for legno\tessile carving, nursing schools ...), religious (churches, oratories, seminars), health (hospitals, clinics, dispensaries ...), social (creation of cooperatives, construction of houses, bridges, roads, etc.). The guys deserving, chosen from the most needy families, receive education, vocational training, food and lodging. The volunteers (about 300) lend their work in a totally free, without receiving any economic compensation and for shorter or longer periods, ranging from short stays of one or two years until permanent presences of ten, twenty and more years (permanent volunteers).

Any summer youth groups go in shipments for a period of 4 months.

This is one of the fundamental experiences of the individual path OMG: contact, poor knowledge and work in South America promote the maturation of the young man who, returning to Italy he generally continue with increased vigour its commitment for the poor with friends of their own group, communicating and sharing the experience and the need to do something concrete for the poor whom he met and knew.