Associazione Partecipazione e Sviluppo, based in Bagni di Lucca, through its members and employees, has used its influence for years on behalf of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.   Their efforts have now extended to practical help even "at home", believing that emigration is not undertaken generally as a valid practice in the presence of poverty and scarcity of economic resources, but an extreme, risky proposition with many young people choosing to move away from their land and their families, impoverishing the African territory of itsmost important resource for social and economic development: human capital. For this reason, the Governing Council of the Associazione Partecipazione e  Sviluppo has decided to create the "Africa Group" which gathers managers, volunteers and employees who, at first had identified Eritrea as the recipient of their economic aid but, following the cooling of relations with the Government of Asmara which stalled the collaboration (the first non-profit organization to establish an operational headquarters in Eritrea ...) decided to focus its attention on Burkina Faso. This follows the meeting  with the writer Clementine Talatou Pacmogda during the presentation of one of her own books on life in Burkina Faso. Subsequently, the Association decided to meet the Consul of Burkina Faso in Tuscany, Mrs. Rossella Segreto, widow of the artist Pietro Annigoni. Mrs. Rossella Segreto is president of a voluntary association based in Florence (Ass. Friends of Pietro Annigoni for solidarity between peoples onlus) that for years has been sending aid to Burkina Faso, a small nation in sub-Saharan Africa which is very poor but full of natural resources - natural resources that are in the grip of diverse local factions, more or less violent and totalitarian, that keep Burkina (which also enjoys a democratic regime) in a state of insecurity and great concern. The Consul subsequently put us in touch with Frere Paul Oudraogo, a Camillian father and director of the Saint Camille Hospital in Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina) who is also a surgeon specialized in pediatrics who graduated in Italy. And it is precisely in that hospital through Father Paul that the Association wants to send an ambulance to be sure that it arrives and that it is in good hands, given that the hospital he directs, the most important in Burkina, has only one ambulance and therefore, an extreme need for at least one other!...  The ambulance will leave from Bagni di Lucca on Thursday 27 May, travelling from Albania to the Ivory Coast and then transported by rail to Burkina Faso.
To complete this mission, the Association collaborated with not only Maurizio Petrillo, who is part of our "Africa Group" and doctor of the Monasterio Foundation (who recovered the medical material that we will send together with the ambulance); the mechanic Marco Boldi of Bagni di Lucca (who fixed the ambulance engine and changed the battery); Alfio Bracciali, Albania shipper (GR); and the secretary of the Friends of Pietro Annigoni Association, Mrs. Elena Lanza.  The entire project was coordinated by Monica Mattei, Director of Associazione Partecipazione e Sviluppo, together with their President Alessandro Ghionzoli. Of course they believe that the Africa project must extend beyond the donation of the ambulance, with a planned visit to Africa (pandemic permitting) to see with their own eyes and better understand the concrete needs of the people of Burkina Faso, in order to continue to help them with their most urgent basic requirements.