Area Tematica: World

It was 1966 and thousands of La Stampa readers turned to Specchio dei tempi to do something about the famine in India. Our charter flights full of food took off from Turin airport: it was the beginning of an extraordinary story of international solidarity and the foundation is still seen as a leading player all over the world today. Even if about 90% of donations are in fact used in Turin and in Italy, it is also true that we have always allocated a part of our resources for interventions abroad. Multi-year initiatives, not hit and run projects, which aim to make the communities where we operate grow.

With this approach, we have been working since 2012 in Hargheisa, Somaliland, where we have built a children’s hospital: our doctors have trained local staff and every year we manage to save the lives of thousands of children. With the same spirit we are present in Myanmar, where we treat the children of the poorest and remotest communities using mobile clinics set up on boats and off-road vehicles. We stop at nothing: in Nepal, we built a school at an altitude of 4000 meters, on the slopes of Everest.

In Mexico, we rebuilt one under an active volcano, in an area without telephone coverage, where we had to bring the Internet connection ourselves. We went to the Syrian refugee camps to give hope (and English and computer courses) to the little ones who had escaped ISIS. Every day we are at the side of 25 Sinhalese girls who are victims of abuse, whom the courts of Sri Lanka have entrusted to us. It is our commitment against violence towards women: a village where girls can study, play and regain a normal life. We believe that every child deserves to be able to grow up peacefully and dream. And that wherever there is someone who suffers, our timely help and the affection of our donors must arrive. An affection that knows no bounds.

For the children of Hargeisa

Hargeisa is the capital of Somaliland. Difficult territory, of great poverty, assaulted by the desertification of many neighbouring areas. Here, Specchio dei tempi built a children’s hospital in 2012. Fifty beds, over fifty employees. Here every day dozens of children are treated, the most serious hospitalized. Lives are saved every day. Here Specchio dei tempi has also developed and launched a three-year programme to support the new Department of Neonatology, which enjoys the contribution of the presence and teaching of neonatologists and nurses from Turin.

The Hargeisa hospital, which has treated over 55,000 children since the beginning of the activity, is headed by Dr. Piero Abbruzzese, former head of cardiac surgery at the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin. Our foundation covered over 80% of the building’s construction and management costs for the first three years. In 2016, as foreseen by the memorandum signed with the Somaliland government even before construction began, the hospital was transferred to the Ministry of Health of that country.

Since 2018, the conditions for an important return of our foundation have been recreated in this area which is one of the poorest and most difficult in Africa. Hence the commitment in the Neonatology department, where an average of 5 newborns are hospitalized every day, of which at least 2 are premature babies of low weight. With the help of a neonatologist and two Italian neonatal nurses, we taught local health professionals and achieved significant results in hospital survival. The shortcomings of Hargeisa, in fact, are mainly in the training of medical and paramedical staff, as well as in equipment. The result of this situation is dozens of children lost every year. Deaths that are avoidable. Lives we want to save.