Poverty is when children in Sierra Leone dream of a school with bathrooms, chairs and desks. When nineteen-year-old Hugo, in Mexico, does not know how to overcome his gambling addiction. Or when Syrian women, like Daad or Nihad, do not have money to pay for therapies and medicines that would be absolutely necessary to fight the breast cancer that attacked them. Poverty is when the right to education or the right to health is not ensured. Or when you no longer have a home to sleep in because it has been destroyed by war. Or by floods, like the devastating ones that have hit Pakistan since mid-June. October 17 is the World Day for the Eradication of Poverty, introduced by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 to spread awareness of the need to combat situations of economic and social disadvantage in all those parts of the world where poverty reigns. For AMU, the fight against poverty becomes concrete through the valorization of the talents that each person possesses, in Burundi, or in Mexico or in Syria. Through the growth of the individual and of the communities, together: one next to the other. Thus, so that each child of the village of Serekolia, in Sierra Leone can go to the school of his or her dreams, with drinking water, a bathroom and desks, AMU is accompanying the local community in the renovation of the building intended for the school . The first step was taken all together: the villagers loaded and transported the sand to the place where the work began. To solve his gambling addiction, Hugo entered Casa San Benito, the facility supported by AMU in Mexico for social reintegration. There he went back to work and study: raising rabbits during the day and reading books in the evening. He regained his freedom from addiction and the ability to believe in his own future. Syrian women with cancer, like Daad and Nihad, are now being treated, undergoing therapies, taking medicine, undergoing periodic check-ups. And it is not just the aspect of physical health, the desire to get better, that is giving them hope again. But also a different vision of themselves: knowing that someone cares about their life enough to pay for medical expenses, accompany them to visits, talk to them about their illness.
This is the method that AMU has chosen to eliminate poverty, supporting with its interventions and projects everything that allows the integral development of the individual and communities. Whether it is the availability of drinking water, whether it is health, education, work or freedom. Focusing on the real needs of communities and the growth potential of individuals, because people have a value, to be safeguarded with extreme care. And potential that can be made available for change.
