Matteo Caracciolo

From the I to the We: Participation, identity and belonging to an association Matteo Caracciolo

When does associative belonging succeed in satisfying our search for meaning?
How can it help us to fully realize ourselves?
These are some of the questions that I have asked myself as a Salesian Cooperator and from which the considerations collected here have emerged. During our existence, we find ourselves making choices of belonging on the basis of emotional drives, contingent personal reasons, solicitations from others, and this often leads us to overlook relevant elements of the member's profile, which then turn out to be essential, to the point of progressively leading us to crisis and detachment. This often makes us confused extinguishing our expectations and distancing us from that well-being any membership should bring.
In this book, I propose a more conscious approach to the choice of participating to an association, based on a more careful comparison of our aspirations and motivations with the culture, needs and values that characterize the association we are interested in, in order to make possible a fuller expression of our being.
In the first part, I explore different types of belonging and their respective characteristics and implications, and then I focus on those attitudes and behaviors that are particularly significant in an identitarian belonging, such as that to the Association of Salesian Cooperators, to which I am deeply bonded.
In the second part, I propose a questionnaire of self-assessment, which provides support to the member in qualifying his or her own belonging. It can also be proposed by the association to a group of members, for a better understanding of internal dynamics and for the identification of interventions aimed at strengthening the sense of associative belonging.