CARITAS ITALIANA
CARITAS ITALIANA
Caritas Italiana is the pastoral organism of CEI (Italian Bishops’ Conference) taking care of emergency humanitarian activities, social assistance, development proposal, and charity redistribution to poor and destitute people. It has a pedagogical role within the Italian Catholic Church: it means that works to educate to charity and solidarity, to promote behaviours based on love and sake, to get people active in analysing and solving problem, both on local and international level. It has been founded in 1972 and the Statute has been updated in October 1991. Caritas Italiana is divided in two main branches: National Department Area (which main activity is the co-ordination on above subjects of 223 Diocesan Caritas in Italy) and International Department Area. The latter is acting with direct actions, since its foundation in 1977, in many countries all over the world, generally the poorest ones, with various roles: funding agency, executive and project management and as facilitating partner or liaison agency for the Caritas network. Caritas Italiana is engaged in project management since many years with a professional background in management of community participation and socially based rehabilitation and development projects: according to this long experience on the ground, Caritas Italiana developed specific methodologies of intervention. Its work is not based only on first aid: solidarity actions do not finish in the emergency period, but continue through medium and long-term plans of rehabilitation and development. Caritas Italiana strongly believes that only local people deeply know their societies, such as sources, lacks and risks of their area: so local partners are always involved in the projects, and great importance is given to listening and analysing skills. Special care is given to education, that means two things. On one side, staff education is a priority issue: skills and know-how; methodologies of interventions; aims of actions; knowledge of cultural, historical and social background of regions where they work. On the other one, it is equally important beneficiaries capacity building training, in order to foster new ways of thinking and facing problems.
Italy
http://www.caritasitaliana.it
Continental
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