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JRS video series: Mercy in Motion - Open Minds, Unlock Potential

(Vatican Radio) Valerie, a dynamic teenager from DRC whose family has found refuge in South Africa; Luwam, a dancer from Eritrea, and Wahida,  an English teacher who fled Afghanistan are some of those telling their stories in a new series of Jesuit Refugee Service videos produced by the JRS “Mercy in Motion” campaign.   Every week, as from Friday, 16 September, you can watch and listen to some uplifting, encouraging, sometimes sad or dramatic – but never – despairing stories of refugees from across the globe on Vatican Radio’s English Facebook page.At a moment in time in which an unprecedented 65 million people are on the move in search of a safe place, peace and a decent, better future, these videos aim to contribute to a better understanding of who “refugees” are and why – as Pope Francis has said many times – it is important to build bridges and not walls, and that inclusion and integration are not a threat, a...

(Vatican Radio) Valerie, a dynamic teenager from DRC whose family has found refuge in South Africa; Luwam, a dancer from Eritrea, and Wahida,  an English teacher who fled Afghanistan are some of those telling their stories in a new series of Jesuit Refugee Service videos produced by the JRS “Mercy in Motion” campaign.   

Every week, as from Friday, 16 September, you can watch and listen to some uplifting, encouraging, sometimes sad or dramatic – but never – despairing stories of refugees from across the globe on Vatican Radio’s English Facebook page.

At a moment in time in which an unprecedented 65 million people are on the move in search of a safe place, peace and a decent, better future, these videos aim to contribute to a better understanding of who “refugees” are and why – as Pope Francis has said many times – it is important to build bridges and not walls, and that inclusion and integration are not a threat, a loss of identity or a potential impoverishment of our cultures, but an opportunity for growth and enrichment. 

Vatican Radio’s Linda Bordoni spoke to Giulio D’Ercole, JRS Mercy in Motion communications coordinator about the videos and about the message JRS hopes to get through:

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Giulio D’Ercole explains that the Mercy in Motion" is an advocacy and fund raising campaign that aims to double the number of refugees served by the Jesuit Refugee Service by 2020.

In order to do so JRS has promoted several initiatives, “one of them is to give visibility to the refugees and to their lives” he says.

D’Ercole explains that the video team that filmed and produced the videos has made a deliberate choice to not show the dramatic moments in which the refugees become refugees, “but to tell their stories in a much more in-depth way by describing their lives, their aspirations, their hopes, what their lives were before they became refugees, what happened and why they had to flee their own countries and become refugees or internally displaced people”.

At the end of each video you can also see what JRS is doing to help them build a future and realize their dreams thanks to its many educational and training programmes.

D’Ercole speaks of the objectives JRS has managed to reach since the beginning of the Mercy in Motion campaign which was launched in response to the Year of Mercy wanted by Pope Francis.

He also tells of how the video team travelled throughout Africa and in Asia Pacific regions - Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar to talk to refugees – men, women and children - from totally different backgrounds to be able to tell their stories.

“Each video has been recorded in a very ‘human’ way” he says. 

And he stresses, it wanted to show the lives of the refugees rather than only what JRS does for them. 

D’Ercole talks about some of his favourite videos including Valerie’s story – a young girl from DRC who is a refugee in an urban setting in South Africa.

“The reason I like her story very much is because despite the fact – or maybe because of the fact – that she is only sixteen, she’s incredibly smart and very outspoken and basically, what she says is that she can’t believe how Africans would kill one another and oppose one another and not be accepting and welcoming (referring to the xenophobia in South Africa). But what she says that is very important is that one must try and try and try because if you try there is no failure…” he says.

D’Ercole says JRS aims to produce 25 videos that will help us to give us a good idea of all the realities faced by refugees and also help us to understand that one becomes a refugee running away from war, from poverty, from persecution and from natural disasters.

He says that the 25 videos will end up illustrating a wide spectrum of problems and realities refugees face. 

“The Jesuit Refugee Service helps refugees accompanying them, serving them, advocating for them because it strongly believes that those are all human lives, and they all have a potential that needs to be nurtured, needs to be expressed, and needs to be given the possibility to become a reality”.

For more information on the Mercy in Motion campaign visit www.mercy-in-motion.org 

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