The story of a trainer and a teacher who, with imagination and commitment, turned magic shows into a project to help children around the world.
Seeing children get lost in adolescence prompted me to get involved as a trainer. In particular, I was struck by the educational style of Don Bosco, who said, “If you have in your heart what children have in their hearts — play, adventure, fantasy, fun — God passes to children through all this, provided that you, the educator, have God in your heart.” This phrase inspired me to train as an animator, puppeteer and even magician.
When a family in financial difficulty, due to lack of work, asked me to start an entertainment agency together, I agreed to cooperate for free with my magician skills. After some time, the family found stable employment and we closed the agency, but the requests for magic shows kept coming in. Having a job already, it didn’t seem right to profit from a second job, especially thinking of the many children in the world who don’t have the necessities of life. I therefore decided that all the proceeds from my shows would go to them.
I thought the demands would decrease with time, but, unbelievably, I’ve been waiting 25 years — and it still hasn’t happened! My wife Graziella, a preschool teacher, had an insight more than 20 years ago. Some of her pupils’ mothers wanted to do something different at Christmas: they felt that the number of gifts the children were receiving was excessive and they wanted to convey values to them. So Graziella proposed having a magician come to the school to help poor children around the world. She sewed her first outfit: a colorful tailcoat, from which she got her name: “Magician Frack” (with a final “k” to give it strength!).
Together Graziella and I wrote a fable, The Malibu Star, to raise children’s awareness of the reality of poverty. Through storytelling, theatrical performances, and creative activities proposed by the teachers, the pupils come to discover the value of gift-giving and understand the reality of less fortunate children who can support through their small savings or giving up a gift. During the magic show, they hand over to Santa Claus, as it were, their colorful, carefully decorated little boxes containing the savings they have collected. Every penny is treated with respect, because we feel that in a sense it is “sacred” and is entirely allocated to underprivileged children through AFN’s projects. (We do not even withhold the euro from the bulletin to make the deposit!). Over the years we have supported the Fiore school in Guatemala, the Bangui school in the Central African Republic, and most recently the Magnificat school in Kenya. We always send parents a letter of thanks, accompanied by the deposit receipt, to be displayed on school bulletin boards.
This initiative not only involves children, but generates dialogue with families. I remember one particularly touching episode: a child donated 26 euros, in 10- and 20-cent coins. It was a large amount, and before we donated it, we tried to find out if the mother agreed, and she responded: the child wanted to empty his entire piggy bank. The children’s donations were joined by those of teachers, grandparents and even the mayor of the village. Over the years, the project has spread to many primary and secondary schools, not only in Abruzzo but also outside the region, involving classes and entire school circles. I never ask for an entrance fee to the shows, because the goal is not how much is raised, but to raise awareness among children, to make them aware of less fortunate realities and to educate them about giving. None of us chose where or in which family to be born. We, who feel we are among the fortunate, owe a debt to life: it is this realization that prompted us to create a second job–and a mission.
by Franco Di Biase
