Organisation: Santos Cirilo y Metodio Confederation

Although Spain, as a peripheral country, didn’t play an important role in the cleaning of the residuals, with the passing of time many different Spanish associations and institutions have got involved in aid projects in Ukraine and Belarus, hosting sick children during the summer.

There are many organizations that have provided and are currently providing this humanitarian help all around Spain, but I would like to emphasise especially one institution: the Semana Santa (Holy Week) of Seville.

It is one of the most relevant cultural and touristic reclaim in Seville, the town where I live. It’s a baroque tradition initiated in the context of the Counter-Reformation, in order to exalt the Catholic religion and its traditions and dogmas. Nowadays, it’s a central event, not only in Seville, but also in the rest of the region, Andalusia, and the country.

The Semana Santa is organised by many different brotherhoods, each of which follows different Christ and Virgin Mary images and advocations, as if they were laic Catholic ordinations. These brotherhoods have a great importance in Seville’s social life, not only in a cultural way, but also because of the charities and humanitarian help that they carry out.

The humanitarian project that I would like to talk about was created in 2001, after a SOS call made by the Belarus Pediatric Society. Only El Cachorro brotherhood collaborated this time, but this was the starting point of the development of the Santos Cirilo y Metodio Confederation, which today, ten years later, is supported by 27 brotherhoods of Seville, Huelva and Cádiz and hosts more than 700 children every summer (532 of them by Sevillian brotherhoods). But this is not an independent project; the Santos Cirilo y Metodio Confederation is part of a national movement that receive more than 3000 Belarus children during the summer and 300 during the Christmas holidays.

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