Archives: Progetti

Chiang Rai is situated in the North of Thailand, in a piece of land called Gold Triangle. A great mountainous area where villages of Burmese, Laotians and Chinese refugees are half-hidden in the forest. The northern tribal minorities, the so called “tribes of the mountains”, are still semi-nomadic groups without personal documents nor land deeds and some of them are not even recorded to the registry office. In general, they are not educated and do not speak Thai, but only their own dialects. In 1993, in the Sri Vichian village, the Camillians opened a hosting centre: The Camillian Social Center of Chiang Rai (CSC), which aims at providing education and schooling for tribal children so that they can learn to manage their lives and improve their life conditions.

At the CSC we are developing an agricultural project addressed to disabled and non-disabled children who belong to tribes of the mountains. Through agricultural and farming activities, following an informal method of learning, children and young people involved in the project can acquire new agricultural skills and techniques. At the same time, they can learn how to manage the income for the sale of cattle, which will be used to purchase food and school stuff, to carry out sport activities or will be invested in the plantations for the future sustainability of the hosted children. In this way, we are creating a virtuous cycle that everyone can benefit from. PRO.SA foundation is supporting the expenses for the renovation of a pig house and a chicken pen, for the purchase of fish-farming equipment and for the plantation of different fruit plants, which are necessary to start the activities.

We hope that the communities around will follow a similar path so that children can develop basic skills to do a job.  

The “Village of Joy” project was started in Autumn 2009. The help requests which come from the Association Ensemble pour le bien etre de l’enfant to find a home for orphan children, who lost one or both their parents, are always increasing. For this reason, it was decided to create a small village where to welcome and grow up orphans. Currently, there are three houses which accommodate forty children. The centre is officially recognized and it collaborates with public social services. Assistance in the centre is ensured by 13 “mothers” – who alternate day and night in the houses to take care of the babes – together with educational, health and administration personnel. The nutritional needs of the children can differ according to their age. Guaranteeing food and micronutrients provision through balanced meals is the main goal to fight malnutrition.

Both the children from the centre and those assisted at home benefit from medical care, while new-entries have to undergo a check-up to know more about their state of health. Newborn and infants very often suffer from malaria or intestinal infections while the most common diseases among the children over 2 years are infections, malaria, cough, flue, wounds and bruises they get themselves during recreational activities. The main goal of the project is to reduce the impact of health problems among children and to grant serious prevention, therefore, the canteen has been completely reconstructed and adequate sanitation service are going to be realized next to the playing area. Child-friendly washbasin with running water will be installed for hand-washing before snack time. In this way, we try to raise the well-being of minors, teaching them personal hygiene rules.

The shower room will be reconstructed to satisfy the needs of the babes and to facilitate the work of the “mothers”. Next to this area there will be a little WC – to accustom children to use it – and enough space for potties which fit their age best.

The structure will be equipped with electricity and small solar panels, as well as an external portico that will protect it during the raining season.

Many development interventions supported by PRO.SA are focused on sustainable access to adequate water services, clean sanitation services and renewable energy sources.

In Lusaka, far from the residential districts, informal, densely populated areas have emerged over the last decade, where people from rural areas flock in search of a better life. These are neighborhoods with a high concentration of poverty, unemployment, and social distress in all its forms, where women are victims of social, cultural, and domestic violence, and where minors are at high risk of abuse, malnutrition, school dropout, and exploitation. In the largest and most degraded of these compounds, Kanyama, the STOP THE VIOLENCE project has been underway since 2018, initiated and supported by the PRO.SA Foundation.

Violence against women, even at a young age, is a widespread phenomenon in Zambia, as in many other African countries. The reasons behind this phenomenon are primarily cultural: the female gender is assigned a subordinate role to males, and this subordination is manifested in all areas of a woman’s life, including the sexual one. The phenomenon crosses all social classes but is even more evident and dramatic in the slums, where alcohol abuse, low education levels, and the trap of poverty fuel violent behaviors against women and often its most weak and vulnerable members (orphans and girls or women with physical and/or mental disabilities).

Gender-based violence is one of the contributing factors to the spread of HIV/AIDS: Zambia is one of the most affected countries in Southern Africa by the pandemic. Over the last 20 years, progress has been made in combating Gender-Based Violence, with the establishment of anti-violence units (Victim Support Units) in many police stations (including one in Kanyama), the creation of a dedicated ministry for the promotion of women’s rights, and the enactment of a 2011 law to protect women victims of violence, which includes the opening of shelters for women whose lives are at risk. However, in the absence of resources, these objectives remain only on paper. Women rarely report incidents, and even more rarely do cases go to court: the majority of women are not even aware of their rights and consider it “almost normal” to be beaten by their husband if they violate their marital duties. From childhood, women are exposed to rituals and initiations involving modifications of their genitals, which primarily aim to teach them to be submissive to men and to always please them. Economic dependence (often associated with a low level of education) or simply having no other place to sleep or seek refuge discourages reporting. Often, even the woman’s family of origin refuses to take her back if she is a victim of violence: the woman has been “bought” by the husband’s family and is considered his property, which cannot be taken away from him.

In this context, it was necessary and urgent to intervene to offer support to victims and initiate or breathe life into a cultural process that would remove the aura of “normality” surrounding gender-based violence prevalent in the slums. Faced with such a dramatic situation, the PRO.SA Foundation launched the Stop the Violence project, which led to the opening of an Anti-Violence Unit at Kanyama public hospital in October 2019, the only outpost to address such a widespread phenomenon. The unit is coordinated by an Italian operator, with two counselors and a paralegal working there. The Anti-Violence Unit offers victims free assistance in various forms: a listening space, accompaniment to access medical care and obtain the necessary health certification to initiate legal proceedings, home visits, legal advice and assistance in court, couple counseling, and parenting support. The Stop the Violence team interfaces daily with various police stations, where they often have to contend with cultural prejudices of all kinds, which downgrade violence to normal customs within a family. The daily effort of the Stop the Violence operators is to make victims aware of their situation and their rights, and to train and hold accountable those responsible for certifying violence and protecting victims. It is a complex job, emotionally challenging, that takes the form of a cultural battle against gender stereotypes and in defense of the integrity and dignity of women and minors.

In 2021, “ULEMU no one excluded” was established, a local organization and partner of the PRO.SA Foundation, created to better coordinate all ongoing activities and projects, and the only entity in Kanyama that supports victims of violence. Its name, in the local language, means “respect.”

In the three-year period from 2021 to 2023, the Anti-Violence Unit welcomed 4,792 victims of physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence. Of these, 1,389 were minors.

Read the REPORT to discover the activities carried out in 2022.

Read the REPORT to discover the activities carried out in 2023.

PRO.SA Foundation met Radha Paudel in 2018 and decided to act concretely in order to support an important project that she was about to start.

Radha Paudel is a health care professional and a Nepali activist who survived Maoist terroristic attacks and who has been dealing for years with the condition of women in Nepal. Among her numberless initiatives we were particularly interested in her fight for the recognition of the righ to a “dignified menstruation”.

In Nepal, as in many other countries, the menstrual cycle is taboo, something you shouldn’t talk about and you must keep secret.

During the menstrual period, women who belong to families of the Hinduist tradition are removed from their habitation and isolated in huts or stalls in extreme conditions.

This archaic tradition is called Chaupadi and it causes every year numerous victims and deep pain to millions of women who feel deprived of their own dignity.

We accompanied and financially supported Radha Paudel Foundation participating to the purchase of machines for the production of organic sanitary napkins that are freely delivered to women who cannot afford them.

Part of the production is sold in order to create an economic driving force that will help the foundation to establish an education system supporting women and to grant a salary to the female workers of the small production laboratory.

Last year, we created a virtuous cycle purchasing hundreds of organic sanitary napkins for poor girls who live in accommodating centres in Kathmandu.

The Special Education School in Luang Prabang gives to deaf children the opportunity to get an education and to learn a profession. The main goal is to encourage their integration in the working world. In order to enhance their work and promote their learning, the centre has developed a lot through the years and it aims at becoming even more self-sustaining. To help the beneficiaries to complete their course of study and secure a future for them, The Sister of Maria Bambina opened a three-year program for professional training for the older students. At the end of the training, the students will have the skills and the competences needed to find a job and be independent.

The centre works exactly as a farm, with a big garden and some animals: pigs, frogs, ducks and chickens. The agricultural activities included in the project aim at guaranteeing a source of livelihood to the beneficiaries, so that they can reduce their expenses, trying to become independent. With the contribution of the Italian Caritas, in 2018, two big greenhouses were built in order to cultivate the kitchen garden all along the year. The main products of the kitchen garden are cabbage, chili, onions, cucumbers, beans and pumpkins.

Thanks to the recent creation of a lake for fish farming and fishing, the students have the opportunity to learn a job. The lake is also very useful for collecting raining water during the raining season, while during the dry water is pumped in the kitchen garden to water the plants and clean the spaces for the animals. The start of fish farming and fishing activities will contribute to the self-sufficiency of the centre over time.

Small agricultural cultivations or distribution chains in accommodating and rehabilitation centres for minors make people conscious that the activities in which they are involved can be an income and a source of subsistence for themselves and the project.

In Nakuru, the fourth biggest city in Kenya, the phenomenon of street children is extremely spread, as in the rest of the country. It often happens that minors leave their houses to avoid starvation or because they are victims of violence and abuses. In the street, children are approached by criminal organisations that exploit them and control every single moment of their lives. In most cases, children become addicted to drugs, sniffing glue to stop hunger and thirst.

Welcome to the Family project is developed in this context in order to give a second chance to the children and the adolescents that it hosts.   

The centre is divided into two sections: the Boys Ranch, a residential centre for male where minors follow a one-year rehabilitation and educational path; and the Calabrian Shelter, a residential centre for female, which offers assistance and psychological support to girls victims of abuses.

In 2017, within the Boys Ranch, we realised the project “Right to water – Right to life” which ensures access to drinking water to all the children hosted in the centres, through a water purification system. The project also includes activities of bottled water production and sale and of plastic recycling. These activities will support the educational path offered by Welcome to The Family and will cover the salaries of the educators who work with the children daily.

In 2018, we carried out another project: “For a sweeter world”. An activity of beekeeping which values the boys and the girls involved, so that they become responsible growing in harmony with themselves. Beekeeping is linked to the rhythms of nature and the contact with the bees can gradually teach them to respect it. In this way, they can acquire the values of responsibility and hygiene, learning to live in the community respecting nature. Currently, a first group of boys and girls completed the theory lessons and has already produced the first jars of honey. A delicious and quality honey, thanks the proximity of the centre to the Lake Nakuru National Park, whose biodiversity is extremely high.

In August 2019, a new family house was built within the compound to host about twenty street children from 10 to 17 years old, who had been rescued by the educators of the Welcome to the Family, after the latest raid ordered by the Kenyan Government.

40% of children who suffer from malnutrition live in India, where a centre has become an example of inclusive and sustainable growth. Snehagram is a Camillian home which hosts about a hundred HIV-positive children and adolescents, some of whom have no family while others come from poor families who cannot take care of them. Snehagram accompanies them in their educational path, until their integration into the working world.

Since the very beginning, in Snehagram, the managers thought that agriculture, in particular the organic one, could have been a livelihood and development activity both for the children and the centre itself. After the first year, the commitment has increased: thanks to PRO.SA’s support it was possible to create an orchard, to introduce new crop varieties in the kitchen garden and to implement training programs. The team of adolescents involved in the project visited private organic farms where some experts of the organic sector who trained them.

The team of adolescents involved in the project visited private organic farms where some experts of the organic sector who trained them. Initially the project was focused on the cultivation of crops for the consumption of the centre but later, thanks to the experience gained, they started to cultivate vegetables like tomato, chili, beet, horseradish, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, bok choy, celery, spinach, coriander, mint and many others, for commercial purposes.

Since July 2018, the team started a new activity for two hours a day: of organic vegetables for passers-by on the way to the city. Despite the initial distrust towards the children because of their seropositivity, the idea worked and now many people who live in the villages around have become regular customers.

Thanks to 5×1000 funds, PRO.SA supported various projects: a solar panel plant for energy conservation, a rearing of broiler and laying hens to compensate for the demand of meet and eggs, and a tailoring school for girls.

A project that goes beyond the nutritional program, offering to HIV-positive children and adolescents the opportunity to grow in harmony, to get an education and to learn a job.