The connecting thread of 2009 campaign:
40 days reading the letters from the last 40

This year each day of the campaign is focussed on a letter written by a person from a selected country. All the letters have been specifically written for the campaign. Their authors have been asked to write about their country, about their personal situation and about what they would like to tell the Northern countries. All of them have been absolutely free to write in their letters what they have wanted. They knew they were writing directly to the inhabitants of a developed country, and that their letters would be read by them. From August 2007 to October 2008 we received more than a hundred letters. From all of them we have selected 40, one for each day of Lent. The rest of them can be read in the section “Other letters” of each country. Although we have already thanked all the authors directly, we would like to thank again all people who have sent letters to us.
Therefore this is the connecting thread of this year campaign: 40 days reading the last ones. Reading what they want to tell us, listening to their worries and requests, their gratitude, their point of view about life and development.

In spite of the excellent disposition of all collaborators, it must be added that in many cases it has not been easy to obtain the letters. Actually, in some cases it has not been easy at all. Quite often, after our first initial enthusiasm, we have run into reality face down. Father Germán Arconada, of "Padres Blancos" (White Fathers), formulated it from Bujumbura, (Burundi), with a lot of success: "I praise you and I thank you for fighting to be near of the last 40. It is the best way of being human and Christian. But it is not easy to obtain the writings from them. The last ones do not communicate easily in writing".
It is so. We would have liked to receive letters from "the last of the last", but these ones, precisely because of that condition, do not even have the necessary resources to write. In fact, among these forty authors there is a variety of realities: women and men, young and adult, people that have not been able to have basic education –and that have written their letter helped by others– and university professors. Most of them writes from their own country, but some write from neighboring countries to which they have had to emigrate or move seeking for refuge and security; others write from our own country as immigrants. In this way, we recount better the diversity of realities from which the last ones address their word to us.