Burma is one of the poorest countries on the planet. In the south of the country, in Kawthaung, in an area plagued by malaria and dengue, child prostitution, A.I.D.S. and the illegal drug market, Specchio dei tempi has been carrying out a health project for four years. We started in 2016, playing a leading role in the establishment of Medacross, a non-profit organization that is present in the area every day, of which we are the main financiers. Together with Medacross we currently work with two objectives.
The first is to ensure the daily activities of a free medical clinic in Kawthaung. The second objective is an activity of mobile clinics: we use off-road vehicles and boats with a doctor and two nurses on board to reach the most remote villages and to be able to visit and treat hundreds of children and families who have nothing – families of fishermen and growers of the rubber plant.
Specchio dei tempi has so far also organised several missions of Piedmontese doctors to Burma, to train local staff. In the coming months, the activity will continue with the development of new services, to give hope to a country torn by recent political tensions that could lead to further impoverishment.
The fight against cancer has affected millions of women. In the city of Turin it is a battle that is mainly carried out at the Sant’Anna Hospital, a reference point for female oncological pathologies. But Sant’Anna is a hospital with some problems. For some years, the day hospital for chemotherapy treatments was partially unusable: a situation that forced women with cancer (who often come from distant regions) to carry out chemotherapy in other hospitals, outside the treatment circuit that at Sant’Anna would be complete.
It was therefore essential to reopen the day hospital, including the part reserved for chemo, with the two large infusion and health monitoring rooms. Specchio dei tempi accepted the challenge: to completely renovate this area of the hospital, about 1050 square meters, at a cost of 1.2 million euros. On 25 June 2019, the first stone was laid and the works, entrusted to the MIT company of Nichelino, were completed as scheduled at the beginning of March 2020. The environment, characterized by all shades of blue is soundproofed, insulated and uses advanced conditioning and sanitizing systems. Each salon is also equipped with video screens with earphones.
The goal is to give the sick people not only the most advanced therapies but also the right serenity to defeat cancer. Over a thousand patients will be treated each year in the new ward donated by Specchio, which became operational at the very beginning of the Coronavirus emergency. And the foundation will continue to support the women of Sant’Anna, together with the testimonial of the Barbara Bonansea project: the Serie A footballer who has chosen to work for the hospital in “her” Turin, regularly visiting the construction site and meeting the volunteers who have overcome the disease.
Franco, who at 76 lives in a dormitory and dreams of an apartment. Luigina, who cannot walk and is stuck in the house in an eternal lockdown. Antonio, who shows the unpaid bills and explains why he can’t manage: the pension is too low, the expenses too high. Nobody can give him a hand. And Covid has made him even more alone.
The elders of the Thirteenth Salary of Friendship have the same eyes as our parents and grandparents. But they have stories like this behind them: normal families destroyed by misfortune, layoffs or quarrels. Very deep wounds, bank accounts in the red, sudden poverty and poverty that some have always had. They are frail elderly who are even more at risk with the health emergency. They are getting sick and have been forgotten. This is why we want to embrace them in the only possible way, with practical help. What we have offered every Christmas since 1976 to thousands of people like Franco, Luigina and Antonio. A cheque used to pay for heating and rent. A gift that gives hope in these weeks of fear.
In 46 editions of our historic project supported by the readers of La Stampa, we have delivered 76 thousand grants in Turin, for a total of 29.5 million euros. This year, for the first time, we are taking the initiative to the whole of Piedmont and to five other regions with the Specchio d’Italia foundation. So the Thirteenth Salaries are arriving in Genoa, Rome, Bari, Sassari, the city and the province of Milan, as well as in Cuneo, Asti, Vercelli, Alessandria, Novara, Biella. The mechanism is always the same: we are collecting hundreds of requests. Each senior citizen involved in the project receives a cheque for 300 euros by Christmas. Each offer entrusted to us immediately turns into concrete help. The more funds we raise, the more elderly people we embrace.
As in all major calamities, after the earthquake of 24 August 2016 in central Italy, we were immediately operational. We chose Arquata del Tronto, the most affected town in the Marche region together with Amatrice, with 51 deaths and enormous devastation. The work was intense, in perfect accord with the locals with whom a bond of trust and hope was born.
Our new anti-seismic eco-school in Arquata opened on 15 September 2017, on time for the resumption of lessons. Completely rebuilt by Specchio dei tempi, it covers an area of 1000 square meters and houses nursery, primary and secondary schools. Designed to ensure maximum energy savings and the lowest environmental impact, as well as classrooms, offices and services, it also has a computer room, an industrial kitchen and a canteen. Each classroom is wired and equipped with a touch-screen whiteboard. The structure is covered by a 50-year guarantee and has a value of 2.6 million euros to which the urbanization costs of the area must be added.
Once the school was completed, we built a gym right next door, which was inaugurated in September 2018. It is built with materials tested in a “disaster room” that reproduces the most violent earthquakes ever recorded. It is an area of about 500 square meters, equipped with a regulation basketball and volleyball court, bathrooms and changing rooms.
More than 16,000 donor readers from all over the world contributed but also companies such as Reale Foundation and Mail Boxes Etc. Through the Global Giving platform and the Italian Cultural Association of New York, many Americans supported us. In total, around 3.7 million euros were raised. And the foundation’s commitment in the area continues: with a tender for small entrepreneurs, to revive the local economy and with small practical aid for the population. Like cheques for new-borns: 2000 euros for each child.
From Nepal to Mexico, obviously starting from Italy. We connect the children of the world is the project designed to bring together the 26 schools that Specchio dei tempi has rebuilt in the world. The goal is to create a virtual network in which children can get to know each other and make friends with young people of their own age from other continents. The Pertini Institute of Turin is involved in the initiative, to which the foundation has donated a highly advanced “digital class”. Also involved is the Specchio dei tempi school of Arquata del Tronto, just rebuilt after the 2016 earthquake, fully wired and equipped with a computer room.
In the network there is also the last building inaugurated by Specchio after a disaster, the school of Santa Caterina, in Mexico. This school is located under an active volcano, in an area where there was no telephone coverage before the 2017 earthquake and of our intervention. So we took the Internet connection up there and gave the children particular “rugged” notebooks, capable of withstanding severe climates and blows and falls. The same devices were given to students of our school in Nepal, at 4000 meters, and to those of the school of Negombo, in Sri Lanka, which we are supporting after the Islamic attacks of Easter 2019.
In online meetings, the children of each country tell about their traditions and share dreams and curiosities with friends abroad. For weeks they prepare with the help of their teachers, and then, when the web cam is turned on, the magic begins: unique moments like when the little Piedmontese children and the little Nepalese children started singing their hymns live, from Turin to Everest.
Eleven months after the earthquake that struck Mexico in 2017, causing over 360 deaths, many of which were children in dilapidated school buildings, Specchio dei Tempi inaugurated the school it rebuilt in Santa Catalina di Tochimilco. This is a small town inhabited by about a thousand poor campesinos, at an altitude of 2500 meters, on the slopes of the active Popocatepetl volcano, about 100 kilometres from Puebla and 200 from Mexico City. This is the 26th school rebuilt by our foundation: about fifteen in Italy, the others in distant countries (always after natural disasters) such as India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Santa Catalina Cuilotepec is a remote village, reachable only by following a winding road and moreover devastated by the earthquake. No signal, neither telephone nor television, no Internet. The town (500 inhabitants in the centre, a few hundred scattered in the surrounding countryside, farmers and small breeders) is spread out on a plateau that rises gradually from 2500 to 3450 meters. The school is attended by about a hundred students, between 6 and 13 years old, and is made up of two different buildings, on one floor. The first benefitted from a radical renovation, as well as an anti-seismic consolidation. The second building, the largest, completely beyond repair, was first demolished and then rebuilt. The intervention, fully funded by our foundation, had the BUAP University of Puebla as a technical partner. The construction programme was duly respected and the inauguration was held in August 2018: a long popular festival, in a sea of music, gratitude and joy.
Since then we have always been in contact with this school, which we have included in the project “We connect the children of the world” which allows the students of the institutes rebuilt by Specchio to get to know each other and discuss online. Breaking down distances and borders, thus becoming small citizens of the world.
Specchio dei tempi has been close to Sri Lanka for over 15 years and it wanted to be so also after the frightening series of attacks that devastated the country at Easter 2019. On that day, in fact, we immediately opened a fundraiser project among our readers to help orphans and families affected by that unprecedented violence. We began to operate immediately, trying to bring practical help to the poorest of those affected together with a sign of friendship: the friendship of a distant country like Italy, which however knows how to share these immense tragedies.
We are working in Negombo, in central Sri Lanka, where two Catholic churches were attacked by Islamic extremists who killed over 200 people. The tragedy of this small Christian enclave, in a country with a strong Buddhist prevalence and an important Islamic component, was soon forgotten. It is in fact a poor area, with little touristic appeal, inhabited mainly by fishermen: Specchio dei tempi has decided to work here, trying to make schoolchildren quickly forget that terrible trauma. In those attacks, many of these children lost grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, even parents. So we brought comfort and help to the Dundalpitiya public junior school and to the nearby Salesian preschool. In particular, we are changing the face of the poor primary school with renovated classrooms and new play areas. This is because for us at Specchio, children with difficulties, especially those in a poor area like this one, must always be helped. Especially when the others, in this case the great players of the so-called “international community”, forget too quickly.
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.
First the outpatient clinics on the ground floor, then the Cardiology department, the Cardiac ICU department and finally the Child Neuropsychiatry department. Here are the interventions that characterized Specchio dei tempi’ s commitment to Regina Margherita, the children’s hospital in Turin and Piedmont, an excellence recognized throughout the world. The foundation has allocated a total of over 5 million euros to renovate even the most delicate departments, where expensive cutting-edge technologies are indispensable, such as post-operative resuscitation beds.
All the new works were carried out in record time, always thinking also of the psychological impact the hospital has on the little patients with specific furnishings and particular decorations on the walls. The objective of Specchio is not only the renewed functionality of the premises, but also the reception of very young patients and their families.
Much of this work was made possible thanks to a donor who entrusted us with her inheritance and her dream: to continue helping the most unfortunate children and offering them hope. Children like Giacomino, the three-year-old boy who spent more than half of his life in our Cardiology ward and in the summer of 2019 was reborn thanks to a heart transplant: an extraordinary miracle that repays all the effort of our doctors and the generosity of our supporters.
And that’s not all. We also recently gave a set of drills to orthopaedic doctors, while we donated a new holmium ultrasound system to the Pediatric Urology department. Our foundation operates a continuous activity that substitutes, to some extent, some of the “flaws” of the Italian public health system, always thinking only of the good of children.
