Community of Sant'Egidio

THE COUNTRY OF THE RAINBOW

We are children from all over the world and we want to change it. We do not like the world as it is. It is full of many beautiful things but too many people suffer from hunger and war; because their skin's a different color; and because the strong want to crush the weak. Our planet is full of beautiful things, but, more and more it is filling up with trash and the air is getting more polluted and the water is getting dirtier.

We want a more just and human world; a world without divisions between white, black, yellow, and dark, between rich and poor, between young and old. We want to build a cleaner world, where pollution doesn't make forests yellow and water brown, and where there is room for all colors and all people.

We want to live in peace. We do not like growing up in a world where there is war because war is stupid and even those who win suffer and are always afraid. And we want to tell everybody that it is more important to save the earth than to have a lot of money. It is better to have one less T-shirt and one less pair of shoes than to allow children in many parts of the world to work as slaves.

We are friends of everybody, even of those that nobody wants near them. We are friends with the elderly because it is not right that they are always alone. We are friends of those children that people call 'different' because they are like us, even if they do not know how to run or talk. We friends of foreigners, of those that people want to send back, even if sometimes they do not have a real house. We are friend of nature, true friends, not those who burn forests and dirty the sea.

We are many, but we are not all the same. We are from many colors and from all ages; but this not a reason to fight a war. We are committed to grow up together and not to allow violent people steal childhood from children.

It looks difficult but it is easy. We are able to make things from all different colors. White: we clean the world. Red: friendship and solidarity. Yellow: the sun that unites us. Green: the grass where we play. Blue: the night that should not scare anyone anymore. They are the colors of the future. They are the colors of God.

This is the Country of the Rainbow.

Rome, October 4, 1998