“I hope that you will be able to fruitfully make use of what you have learned, in this short course, to welcome and communicate with visitors who come to Sabastiya”: these were the words the teacher of the Italian course – a collaborator with ATS pro Terra Sancta – directed to the young people who participated in the intensive Italian language course held in Sabastiya between March and June 2012.
The participants were all youngsters, many of them already employed in different ways in the project that ATS pro Terra Sancta is carrying out in the village: some are managing the guest house, others are working in the mosaic workshop, and still others have dreams of becoming guides for tourists. During the three-month course all have shown themselves to be motivated and enthusiastic to learn a new language that will in the future enable the doors of their village to be opened to the visitors who come here.
The Italian course is part of a wider project, financed by the Cariplo Foundation and implemented in collaboration with the Mosaic Center of Jericho, under which a number of educational activities aimed primarily at the youth and women of Sabastiya have been carried out.
After receiving their certificates of participation in the course, the youngsters then joined with the teacher, the director of the Mosaic Center of Jericho and several collaborators with ATS pro Terra Sancta to share in some sweets, in a festive atmosphere that gave them the opportunity to practice the Italian they learned during the course.
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