Are there programs to help me locate family back in Europe if I study abroad?

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well, i have 2friends: both are italian-brazilian. the first found contact through manual address tracking (she's fourth generation!) of the italian address of her bisnonno(great-grandpa). now she lives in italy with the relatives of her bisnonno(she came to italy years ago and meet her italian relatives for the first time, eh eh eh).
the second found the italian rott through... facebook,believe it or not.
ah yes, there is another brazilian-italian that i know(third generation) that sent letters to all suspected-as-relatives italians (from yellowpages) that have the same lastname with her... i dunno if finally she got success or not.