Reggio Calabria, November 2015. Humanitarian aid project “Solidarity Week”, organised by the Delegation of Calabria, is scheduled to get underway in the second decade of November. The initiative is perfectly in line with one of the Order’s programmatic goals, namely, to provide assistance to disadvantaged low-income individuals through the provision and distribution of basic food necessities, which on this occasion resulted in a whole truckload of them being donated to the event by Esselunga Spa, one of the major Italian chains operating in the supply chain business. The Grand Prefect, HE The Ambassador Augusto Ruffo di Calabria, whose resourcefulness and keen sense of initiative proved determinant to the event, had no doubts whatever about choosing to allocate the bulk of such provisions to Calabria due to the region’s unenviable top spot in the economic report released by the ISTAT institute (Office for National Statistics): Calabria is currently the number one region for cases of extreme poverty. Standing in a line of continuity with charity project “The Hunger of Our Neighbour”, a programme first conceived by the Grand Master, such a humanitarian appeal had already met with approval at the highest levels of the Delegation’s management and was further announced through a series of events organised in close partnership with other charity agencies. While this is just the beginning, the project is to get off the ground by the end of November, when the whole of the food supplies, shipped at no cost by a well-known truck transport company based in Villaricca, is due to be delivered in Calabria where they will be distributed through a number of donation events taking place in each of the provinces right across the region. The operation will mostly involve parish churches, institutions for pastoral care (Caritas), community centres for both the elderly and the young and by providing for the most vulnerable members of our society, they will act in full accordance with those ‘Christian values’ which the Vice Delegate Mr Aurelio Badolati, Commander of Merit with Star, recently referred to in one of his speeches from not long ago.
