Category: News

Haiti, a fundraising for earthquake victims

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Angelo Conti

Hundreds of deaths, an almost non-existent health system, armed gangs that hinder rescue with robberies and kidnappings, the terrifying earthquake (7.1 degrees) that devastated Haiti on the eve of August 15th requires everyone’s attention. Especially for us at Specchio d’Italia who already experienced the drama of the previous earthquake eleven years ago (less violent, but with the capital Port Au Prince as its epicenter, therefore with thousands of deaths).

Then, through the Specchio dei Tempi foundation (of which Specchio d’Italia is the national brand), we intervened to support the activity of the Saint Camille Hospital in Port Au Prince, also contributing to the creation of a clinic in Jeremee, in the most southern part of the island, which is today also the area most affected by the last earthquake.

“At the moment there are two priorities – explains Father Antonio Menegon – assistance to the wounded who often find themselves in villages completely devoid of basic medical facilities and finding housing alternatives to the destroyed houses. The first emergency is made more critical both by the roads that cross the tormented and mountainous area affected and by the presence of gangs of criminals who, after the recent political troubles in the country, have gained strength and are continually carrying out robberies, kidnappings and violence. Alongside the tragedy of the earthquake, here we must therefore also deal with a profound social drama ”.

Father Robert Daudier is the director of the Saint Camille Hospital: “The earthquake was very violent even in the capital, but it is in the Jeremee area that the situation is truly tragic. In fact, it is difficult to prune rescue by land because the Martissant area, along the route, has been in the hands of bandits for more than 2 months: they shoot passing cars, attack passers-by, kidnap those who can pay for something, and whites they are the most at risk. We need help to overcome these difficult situations, perhaps even trying to use a helicopter. The population was no longer able to cope with these terrible socio-political conditions. And now the earthquake has arrived, with hundreds and hundreds of deaths, thousands of houses destroyed, tens of thousands of families in very serious difficulty, including food ”.

The Specchio d’Italia foundation is the joint arm of the publications of the Gedi Publishing Group. It was born from the Turin experience of Mirror of the Times but is autonomous and widespread throughout Italy. Specchio d’Italia is based in Milan and carries out projects in Rome, Bari, Genoa, Trieste, Venice, Palermo, Crotone and Sassari. Abroad it is present in Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Somaliland, Mexico and Brazil. It lives on the solidarity of those who actually want to give a hand to make the world a little bit better.

*Foto Ansa / La Stampa

Ten life-saving taxis with our defibrillators in Turin

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Angelo Conti

Ten taxi drivers have been at work on the streets of Turin since April 30 carrying a defibrillator donated by Specchio dei Tempi. They are ready to rush to someone’s aid in the event of cardiac arrest. The Taxicardia project, developed together with the Turin Taxi Cooperative, thus becomes fully operational, to help all Turin residents.

50 volunteer taxi drivers have already followed a course organized by AICR (Italian Association of Heart and Reanimation “Lorenzo Greco”) to learn how to use a defibrillator. This is a fundamental device for the first aid of citizens, considering that a person in cardiac arrest aided with defibrillation within 3-5 minutes has three times the chance of survival. In the coming months we will try to equip all the other taxi drivers who have passed this course with a defibrillator.

Taxicardia was born from an initiative of Ermanno (Paris26) and Stefania (Como25), two taxi drivers already active in the Taxi Social Service group. The cars participating in the project will be marked with special plates. Of course, in addition to increasing the number of defibrillators and their availability in the area, it is also important to know how to use them. Hence, the taxi drivers volunteering for first aid training. No sirens or violations: the possibility of moving defibrillators (georeferencing them), combined with knowledge of the city and traffic will increase the protection of citizens from the risk of heart attack.

 

A free clinic for Burmese refugees

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Angelo Conti

Specchio dei tempi and Medacross are engaged in organizing aid for the hundreds of refugees fleeing Myanmar after the violence of the military coup which resulted in over 500 deaths. We work in close synergy with the Catholic priest Suwat Luangsaard.

In recent days, with Daniele Regge and Erika Vitale of Medacross and with Anastasia Sironi of Specchio, we have defined the terms of our intervention which will begin with the starting up of a free health clinic in the Thai city of Ranong, the first beyond the Burmese border. Here the refugees who managed to leave Myanmar are housed in the football stadium, while two tent cities are being set up. We will work here too, in the coming months, to give hope to a very poor people who are now also affected by the violence of the military regime.

Every Friday 15 tons of fruit delivered to the poorest

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Angelo Conti

This morning we went to the CAAT in Grugliasco where Specchio dei tempi decided to support the activity of the 200 volunteers of Food Solidarity, the association led by Alberto Saluzzo that every Friday recycles 15 tons of fruit and vegetables “leftover” by the traders of the Wholesale Markets. Some of these foodstuffs are delivered to the elderly of our Forza Nonni project and another part is delivered to our Breakfast for the poor at Casa Santa Luisa. Specchio has provided the association with a van and also with adequate industrial shelving.

This support will continue over time and foresees important developments in the autumn. Yesterday, at CAAT, we also met the president of Rotaract Piemonte-Valle d’Aosta, Gerard Davy with whom we laid the foundations for a common event in September, to support the activity of Food Solidarity. Together for a Turin that is moving along the right path.

 

Rwanda, we’ll give 50 children the chance to go to school

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Angelo Conti

For a couple of years now, Specchio dei tempi has been paying attention to what is happening in Rwanda. Here we are committed on two fronts: the first is support for the primary school of Nganzo, a small agricultural centre in the interior, attended by about 700 children, all in precarious economic conditions.

In Kigali, on the other hand, we pay school and boarding fees to 50 families to ensure that children (from towns and villages in the region) can follow their studies. Everyone can help us in this project which is followed locally by Anna Maria Zavagni, a retired Turin teacher, who has decided to work for the children of this poor African country.

 

The new oncohematology ward of the Regina Margherita hospital opened

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Press Release

The new pediatric Oncohematology Outpatient Clinics of the Regina Margherita Children’s’ Hospital of the City of Turin were inaugurated today (under the direction of Professor Franca Fagioli) with an area of about 1120mq, in which there are twelve outpatient clinics, two doctors’ offices, three offices, three hospital rooms and an area dedicated to hospital staff.

The intervention required major investments, amounting to about 1 million 500 thousand euros, and about 6 months of work. This project, carried out with the support of € 600,000 from the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation and € 300,000 from the La Stampa – Specchio dei tempi Foundation, is the fifth important milestone for the Piedmont section of the ADISCO Association, chaired by Francesca Lavazza.

The Outpatient Clinics for Paediatric Oncohematology, located on the first floor of the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital in two sections, have been the subject of an extraordinary maintenance intervention aimed at the renewal and humanization of the spaces, in order to create conditions of well-being for both patients and staff. This project continues the work of redeveloping the healthcare environments which began with the Day Hospital and then continued with the Isola di Margherita, the Emergency Department and the Paediatric Oncohematology Department, with the aim of creating a synergistic diagnostic-therapeutic path for the patient, thanks to the creation in all environments of graphics and curved walls inspired by the variety and fluidity of nature.

In fact, nature was the theme that guided the entire surgery renovation project: the curved walls, inspired by the sinuosity of the natural world, enliven the rectilinear course of the space and offer an aesthetic and functional continuity with the other departments that have already been restructured. The project also aims to improve the usability of the spaces for both staff and users, creating new paths and adapting clinics to the criteria dictated by the most recent regulations on the prevention of the spread of coronavirus. Graphics, curved walls, colours and floor games allow young patients to feel at ease, trying to alleviate the difficulties of the therapeutic path also from a psychological point of view.

The restyling responded to the need for space optimization: the clinics dedicated to oncohematologal therapies were grouped and located in the wing along Corso Unità d’Italia, while the psychological clinics and clinical studios were separated in the wing in Piazza Polonia, to obtain a more coherent organization of functions. The Clinical Research and Development Unit is also located here. This unit which needs adequate space for the management of clinical trials in safe and controlled conditions, so as to ensure compliance with the quality and structural requirements established by current laws.

For the development of the project, the contribution and advice of the medical-nursing staff were fundamental. In several meetings, the types of spaces and the correct relationship between them were allowed to be effectively defined. In this regard, differentiated accesses for different uses and three new differentiated waiting rooms to accommodate patients destined for different therapies have been added in order to avoid the risk of infectious complications and contagion between one patient and another.

“With the new Paediatric Oncohematology Outpatient Clinics we have reached the fifth intervention for the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital, a result that makes us very proud – declares Francesca Lavazza, President of ADISCO – Piedmont Section – even more so because it was carried out during these difficult months for the health emergency situation we are going through. The concrete and ambitious path of Adisco – Piedmont Section continues, in continuity with what my family has done in the last twenty years. As an association we are looking at the next twenty years, and certainly there are many new projects that we want to implement. Thanks to the support of important partners, such as the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation and the La Stampa – Specchio dei tempi Foundation, and all those who responded to the appeal of Adisco – Piedmont Section, we want to be able to continue to offer the most child-friendly environment possible within a structure that represents a prestigious scientific excellence of our country, even beyond national borders”.

“Since 1563, the Compagnia di San Paolo has been an agent of sustainable development of the territories for the common good, through interventions, investments and accompanying actions that put people at the centre of everything. In this case, the main objective of our intervention is to provide greater protection in a timely manner to those who are most vulnerable, especially in situations complicated by the pandemic – explains Alberto Anfossi, Secretary General of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation -, while guaranteeing added value for all patients even at the end of the health emergency, through the creation of more welcoming and above all safer paths. Through the mission Promote the well-being of the Planet Objective, we want to stimulate actions that allow the health system to improve efficiency and offer high-level assistance through organizational and management innovation in health, especially if associated with a technological dimension. Our mission – adds Anfossi – is also part of the collaboration with ADISCO Piedmont Section, which has seen us involved together in the previous renovations in favour of the Regina Margherita hospital. It is based on a virtuous model of collaboration between the public health company and the private one, capable of achieving a positive leverage effect: by combining the resources of two or more private entities, one intervenes in the spaces of a public body by delivering a complete, compliant work to all the required regulations in a short time. ”

“Specchio dei tempi confirms its commitment to supporting Turin’s public health, continuing to invest in improving the quality of care services and, as always, with particular attention to children. At the same time, prompt actions and initiatives continue to respond to the consequences of the pandemic in support of health care, families and the most vulnerable elderly, schools and small businesses. All this is possible thanks to the generosity of thousands of donors from Italy and abroad which made it possible to distribute over 9 million euros in Piedmont,” said Lodovico Passerin d’Entrèves – President of the La Stampa – Specchio dei tempi Foundation ONLUS.

“We thank Adisco Piedmont Section, the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation and the Specchio dei Tempi Foundation for the realisation in record time of these Oncohematology clinics, designed and made to measure for our young patients. The restructuring of our Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital continues on a path of renewal not only in a diagnostic and therapeutic way, but above all in humanisation, which now distinguishes our hospital for children and their families. I want to underline again that this is the first major work that we have inaugurated after the death of Mrs. Maria Teresa Lavazza, who had always been committed to this very direction of renewal and humanisation of our Regina Margherita hospital” declares Giovanni La Valle, Director General AOU – City of Health and Science of Turin.

“The new department – says Franca Fagioli, Director of Paediatric Oncohematology and Full Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Turin – was designed with particular attention to the privacy and comfort of young patients and their families, renewing the environment of the outpatient clinics to meet the technical needs of medical staff but also offering children and young people a playful and peaceful space to receive the best treatments from a psychological point of view. In fact, it has been demonstrated that the possibility for children and adolescents to use spaces for play, education and leisure in general has a positive impact on the recovery process”.

The attention to spaces designed for the psychophysical well-being of patients, also in respect of the different needs of age, is finally the main theme of the new volume “Humanization, places, care”, edited by ADISCO – Piedmont Section in collaboration with various authoritative scientific voices, which traces the interventions of the Association that have taken place over the years within the hospital with close collaboration between public and private bodies of the third sector.

The renovation project of the paediatric Oncohematology clinics, as well as the four previous interventions carried out in recent years, is by Studio Miroglio + Lupica Architetti Associati and intends to give continuity to a concept of “humanised” hospital architecture that promotes the development of environments capable of responding concretely to the needs and requirements of young patients in care.

With a solid scientific basis offered by the interventions of Prof. Rossano Albatici (Professor of Technical Architecture of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of the University of Trento), of Prof. Franca Fagioli (Director of the Department of Pathology and Child Care of the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital in Turin) and of Studio Miroglio + Lupica Architetti Associati, – retracing the 5 major renovations carried out by ADISCO Piedmont Section inside the hospital – the importance of guaranteeing not only advanced medical therapy but also a high quality of life is told: a factor that has a positive impact on the recovery process, especially when the patients are children and adolescents.

The ribbon cutting ceremony was attended by Alberto Cirio (President of the Piedmont Region), Chiara Appendino (Mayor of the City of Turin), Luigi Genesio Icardi (Councilor for Health, Essential Levels of Assistance, Healthcare Construction of the Piedmont Region), and Stefano Geuna (Rector of the University of Turin).

 

Chapel of the Turin Shroud, restoration of the altar completed

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

The wait is over. Another 20 days and then (lockdown permitting) we will be able to see the restored altar of the Turin Shroud. The eyes of Marina Feroggio, architect of the Royal Museums and director of restoration work on the Bertola altar in the Chapel of the Shroud, peep out from the mask. An intense gaze to observe what must still be done. Few details: the two frontals on the altars, the four silver lanterns on the sides of the reliquary, the cherubs on the balustrade. These are the last steps needed to return Guarino Guarini’s masterpiece in its entirety to the public after a careful restoration made possible thanks to the funds (just over 100 thousand euros) of the Specchio dei Tempi Foundation.

At the moment the inauguration date is Tuesday 30 March, in time for Easter. Feroggio also displays a special heating mat that will prevent the public from getting cold during the visit. Only the government directives of the next few weeks (yellow, orange or red zone) will establish the effective date on which you can return to the Royal Museums, and therefore to the chapel. When it reopened in September 2018, almost twenty years after the fire, the restored architecture contrasted sharply with what was immediately renamed “The silent witness”. The altar of the Shroud in the centre of the chapel, built in 1694 by Antonio Bertola, the architect who intervened on the interior works after Guarini’s death, was blackened, mutilated and damaged before the eyes of visitors. Feroggio indicates it with her hand. It was also proposed to leave it like this, as evidence of the fire. Instead, despite Covid and the lockdowns, the San Luca Consortium in recent months has worked with a team of restorers led by Tiziana Sandri.

“In the tragedy of the fire – she explains – we must be thankful that almost all the wooden and silver furnishings were in the adjacent sacristy, saved from the flames”. We started from these surviving elements, already exhibited in an exhibition in 2010, carrying out painstaking work to reconstruct what was lost and amalgamate it with new elements and new gilding. The altar balustrade is once again dominated by the eight puttos in gilded wood, each of which holds a symbol of the passion of Jesus, made by Francesco Borello and Cesare Neurone. Around the urn, which contained the original case of the Shroud (it remained there from 1694 to 1992, except on three occasions: the Siege of Turin in 1706, the First and Second World Wars) there are statues of angels, only two, the others have been lost. The fascinating silver lanterns will be hung above the four metal shelves. The nineteenth-century ones: the originals were melted down by the Savoy in 1793 to finance the battles against Napoleon. The same fate happened to the candlesticks and to the two puttos, also in silver, at the base of the steps. Feroggio also shows the tabernacle made by Carlo Genova, known as Lacchetta, in 1791, still with the hallmarks of Vittorio Amedeo III.

The great absentee is the chiselled and embossed silver plaque of the City of Turin from 1632, set in the altar until 1992. An extraordinary work: this is the ex voto that the city officials made to the Shroud to give thanks for the end of the plague epidemic of 1630. It is not yet known whether it will be exhibited in the adjacent sacristy of the Cathedral. “The intent of the restoration was to re-propose the altar with the architectural dimension of Bertola – explains the director Enrica Pagella – without exaggerating with trappings”. In the months following the 1997 fire, the readers of La Stampa generously donated just over one billion and two hundred thousand lire at the time. The Specchio dei Tempi Foundation, in collaboration with the Amici di Palazzo Reale Association, which followed the historical-artistic part, was able to finance the restoration not only of the altar, but also that of the Savoy sepulchral monuments, in addition to the cataloguing of thousands of residual fragments of the fire, the creation of an information system to identify and relocate the fragments.

Covid, Lavazza donates 200 thousand euros to help little companies

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

The Lavazza group doubles the amount available for the Specchio dei Tempi tender in favour of micro-activities in Turin and its province, in difficulty due to the pandemic. The budget for the project therefore rises to 400,000 euros and so it will be possible to offer a contribution of 2,000 euros to 200 small businesses. The company had already been close to Specchio dei tempi last spring when it made an important donation towards the many activities carried out in support of dozens of hospitals, hundreds of public assistance services and thousands of families in difficulty.

Now the grip of Covid has returned to make itself felt and Specchio has returned to the field: its invitation to organizations and companies immediately found the positive response of Lavazza who underlined, by illustrating their intervention, the need to support above all those activities that are found in the most difficult neighbourhoods of the city, where the growth of poverty related to the pandemic appears more evident and more cruel. Companies from Turin and its province with revenues of up to 40,000 euros in 2019 can participate in the tender. It is necessary to fill in the form available online here, provide the required documentation as well as a brief description of the activity and difficulties encountered during the pandemic. There is time until midnight on Monday 22 March.

Distribution in one month

The ranking, at the sole discretion of a commission appointed by Specchio dei tempi, will be completed by Easter and bank transfers will begin to be sent from 6 April. The entire operation will therefore be completed within one month. With this intervention, the small businesses supported by Specchio dei Tempi (and its national brand Specchio d’Italia) will rise to over 700 in four Italian cities: Turin, Cuneo, Sassari and Venice. For an overall total of donations close to 2.5 million euros.

Invitations for tenders for companies in Turin and its province are back

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Angelo Conti & Lucia Caretti

We have to start again. It will not be easy and it will be a battle into which we will also have to put a lot of courage. We will have to do it all together, returning to believe in our projects and our dreams. Specchio dei tempi has always meant hope and has always meant Turin. So we want to help our city and our province again, exactly one year after the launch of the “Coronavirus Emergency” subscription. We want to replicate the call for tenders of last May with an initiative aimed at supporting the small and very small artisan, agricultural, tourist and commercial activities that are trying to restart after the hardest months of the pandemic.

Specchio puts € 200,000 on the plate to offer a cheque of € 2000 to 100 micro-companies, to help their recovery and the morale of those who fight this difficult battle. As always, the possibility of sharing this mission is opened up to all, increasing the resources available and thus allowing a greater amount of aid.

The second edition of the “A breath for Turin” tender will be inaugurated on March 6, with the start of applications. There is time until 21 to participate by filling out the form available on this page and uploading all the required documents. At the end of March, the Specchio commission will meet and starting from 6 April we will begin to provide subsidies. All in a month, without wasting time, just as we like it.

HOW TO SUPPORT THE “A BREATH FOR TORINO 2” TENDER.
From 6 March 2020 to today, Specchio has raised over 10 million euros to support the fight against Coronavirus, through almost 16,000 donations from 70 countries around the world. Resources that every day have been transformed into concrete and immediate help: 1.1 million protective devices for health workers; 146 pieces of medical machinery and equipment (including two CAT scanners) donated to 19 Piedmontese hospitals; a thousand tablets, several hundred sanitizing kits and online teaching platforms for schools. Tens of thousands of shopping packages for the elderly and families in difficulty, distributed first in Turin and then throughout Italy. Anyone wishing to support this project and the tender for small businesses can do so by paying online with a click here, or by using any of the methods indicated here.

 

Covid, Specchio back at providing PPE to hospitals and public assistance services

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Specchio dei tempi returns to the field against Coronavirus. In the last weeks, requests for public assistance have become pressing again for the many ambulance services that provide transport for the sick to and from hospitals, to and from medical tents, to and from intensive care. We were ready because we hadn’t excluded the possibility of a second wave of the epidemic so we had set aside about 150,000 face masks and other PPE items during the summer. We have stepped up deliveries of supplies to health professionals following continued requests for help. In recent days ambulance services have come under pressure and we have been able to respond.

The first delivery has been made to the Green Cross of Villastellone, one of the most active organizations in the area, also engaged in the city of Turin. “As in any emergency – explained the president of Specchio dei tempi, Lodovico Passerin d’Entreves – our foundation makes itself available to the community. Ours can be a small help in the face of a great tragedy, but the commitment will always be maximum ensuring the highest speed of intervention, compatibly with the resources available”.

Then the Maria Vittoria and Martini hospitals have been supplied with Pulse oximeters. Two hundred face masks have been given to the volunteers of Telefono Rosa, who work against violence towards women, often in difficult situations in hospitals. Specchio dei tempi has also provided 1000 face masks and 30 high-protection water-repellent suits to the White Cross of Ceva.

In the first wave of the epidemic, Specchio dei tempi raised almost 11 million euros, constantly supplying Piedmontese hospitals and public assistance services for months with over 1 million protective devices, hundreds of pieces of equipment, ultrasound scanners, ventilators, as well as two CAT scanners. Specchio also distributed over 18,000 food packages to as many families and elderly people in difficulty and over 1000 tablets to poor schoolchildren to facilitate distance learning. Specchio also hired a Boeing to allow the arrival, from Havana to Turin, of the group of 40 Cuban doctors and nurses who worked in the Covid emergency hospital in Turin.

The new A&E area of the Mauriziano hospital lacked a defibrillator and Specchio dei tempi immediately intervened with Piemonte Cuore (thanks to Marcello Segre) providing the department with one of our spare automatic defibrillators.

We are on the front line. Every day.

Genoa, Specchio d’Italia opens an after-school programme for the children of Fegino

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

The comeback of Covid hinders school, children and families. It is becoming increasingly difficult to create useful, child-friendly teaching. There is a lack of space, technology, even human presence. The Specchio d’Italia Foundation (born by the will of the Turin-based Specchio dei Tempi Foundation) has therefore decided to intervene also in Genoa, after Turin and Rome, to carry out a project started yesterday that helps with homework and after-school activities. It also wants to be a concrete and effective presence alongside young students who are now more alone than ever.

The initiative was developed with the collaboration of Ceis Genova (Bianca Costa Bozzo Solidarity Centre Foundation) which has chosen to operate in the V Valpolcevera quarter of the Fegino area with Specchio d’Italia that finances the project. The main objective of the project is to sustain and support families in this delicate historical-social moment in concrete and everyday aspects.

The experience of the Specchio dei tempi Foundation in the areas of the metropolitan city of Turin and in the Bastogi district of Rome facilitates and supports similar and replicable work in the Genoese area. The educational commitment to children will be the starting point for a series of intergenerational activities to promote well-being, such as monitoring the needs of families and the entire territory. The premises of the oratory of the Church of Sant’Ambrogio di Fegino have been identified for the project activities. The classrooms are fully usable and allow for the appropriate interpersonal distancing in light of the measures to combat and contain the Covid-19 epidemic. The activities started with the mapping of the bodies and associations of the area that have been invited to suggest recommendations on the project. They are followed with the involvement of school managers and teachers for debate on the school programmes and the situations of greater fragility.

The collapse first of the Morandi Bridge and then the Covid-19 pandemic put Fegino in great difficulty. It is a neighbourhood that until a few years ago hosted important production activities and which now needs to be supported in order not to lose ground with respect to the rest of the city. The Specchio d’Italia project is what the area needed. The foundation’s commitment was appreciated above all by the educational world that actively participated in the project, explaining what the most urgent needs were. It was decided to focus on after-lesson activity, to provide the tools necessary to implement what has been lacking in these months with remote lessons, even to those who don’t have the tools. In short, children and young people who need not to be left alone after two difficult years will be helped. The outbreak of infections is making it even more complicated. There was no shortage of structures, but there was a lack of resources to bring them up to standard. This has been done by involving the church of Sant’Ambrogio, closing the circle of an initiative that embraces the whole neighbourhood.

Yesterday afternoon, the real school support for children between the ages of 6 and 14 also started, with individual and group guidance with homework and training support for children and teenagers from the school of first and second levels. From November, the reinforcement laboratories for school support activities will also start with the organization of thematic laboratories for the reinforcement of logical-mathematical and linguistic learning and transversal skills.

As mentioned, it is only a first step. The plan of the Specchio d’Italia Foundation is intergenerational and therefore will not only affect young people. Particular attention will be paid to the elderly. Initiatives are already being studied to create points of aggregation and to give new life to a neighbourhood that in this way feels less alone. From here Fegino can think of leaving behind these two years and more of hardship.

 

Floods in Piedmont, subsidies are rising: we will help 65 companies

by Specchio dei tempi
Posted on

Seven hundred and fifty donations, large and small, for a total of 337,207 euros. These numbers demonstrate the solidarity of the La Stampa-Specchio dei tempi Foundation, close to the people of Piedmont hit by the flood of a month ago. The vast majority of interventions have been made in the Cuneo area and have increased in the last few hours (also thanks to a new important donation). Specchio dei tempi has in fact decided to extend the 3000 euro contribution to all 65 activities that participated in the tender (launched in recent weeks with Reale Foundation, Confartigianato Cuneo, Banca Alpi Marittime), an important gift that could be used to meet the primary expenses of the most damaged small businesses, artisans, commercial and agricultural. Many bank transfers have already been made, the others will be sent within a few days. The tender was open to small and very small entrepreneurs from the eight areas of Cuneo most affected. The municipality that sent the most requests was Garessio with 25, followed by Limone Piemonte with 16, Ormea with 13, Ceva with 6, Bagnasco and Pamparato with 2, Priola with 1. There was no request from Nucetto.

All those who participated will receive the Specchio contribution as a gift. This was also made possible by a generous donation of the Industrial Union of Turin: “After the contribution that last March – explained the leaders of the Turin association – the Industrial Union of Turin and the Turin trade union secretariats of CGIL CISL UIL donated to the Turin hospitals to support the Covid emergency, the same Associations jointly donated 35,000 euros to the Specchio dei Tempi-La Stampa Foundation in Turin to support the populations who were victims of the floods that hit some territories of the Piedmont Region in October last year. With this donation, the role of the Committee that was established since 1994 on the occasion of previous natural disasters to jointly raise funds for the aid of structures of common interest affected by disasters, supporting them economically, has been fulfilled “.

But the good news doesn’t end here. In the days immediately following the flood, Specchio dei tempi visited the premises of the Ceva Professional Training Centre. An allocation of 10,000 euros was decided, immediately delivered, to which Specchio has now decided to add another 50,000 euros to allow the purchase of a numerically controlled machine, essential for the training of the children. “We are happy with this choice – explained Mario Barello, the general manager of CFP Cebano Monregalese – which will allow us to fully resume all our activities soon. The CFP has three operational offices in the province of Cuneo: Ceva, Mondovì and Fossano. In the last years of training, in the three locations, a total of around 5000 people (young people after middle school and adults for retraining and professional updating) have turned to various training activities. If we consider the Ceva headquarters alone, there have been over 2,000 people. As regards the activities related to the mechanical sector of the Ceva site alone, the students who use our laboratories exceed 200 per year on average, including adults “.

Specchio dei tempi then decided to carry out some minor interventions in favour of two hard hit businesses in the municipality of Lisio, somewhat forgotten in the days following the calamitous event, despite extensive damage. In line with further developments of the subscription, the La Stampa Foundation intends to evaluate the possibility of intervening also in Val Gesso, in the Maritime Alps Park, to support green tourism that could restore economic momentum to this area. At the moment these are only ideas which could however become reality if the solidarity of the subscribers allows it.

This is what we have recently added to the previous interventions: kindergarten and walkway in Ceva, multifunctional area in Nucetto, Pollicino park in Ormea. But what we are proudest of is the aid to 65 small businesses in the Cuneo area to which we have given a little respite, together with our friendship and hope.