Seniores Italia Lazio
Founded in 1994, Seniores Italia Lazio (SIL) promotes intergenerational connections between skilled senior volunteers and the organizations involved in youth development, cultural/social integration and sustainable community development.
SIL connects professionals with opportunities to volunteer their time where it is needed most. SIL works in Italy’s Lazio region as well as in several underserved countries around the world, focusing where volunteers’ insights can be most valued.
In Italy SIL is actively working with high school students from disadvantaged families in suburban Rome, running courses that teach skills required by the workplace. In the last four years SIL has organized and run 60 training courses involving 1400 high school students. SIL also works to train and vocationally integrate immigrants. International projects include ones like the one being funded by the Foundation, teaching livestock and agriculturally focused income generating business practices in Madagascar.
Giampaolo Calcari
P&G Alumni Grant Champion
Giampaolo Calcari
37-years in Product Supply and HR in P&G Italy/Southern Europe.
Additional Alumni involvement from: Antonio Malvestio – 36 Years in Product Supply; Riccardo Vitale – 35 years in Sales, IT, Global Business Service; Paolo Cerullo – 27 years in Product Supply; Valentino D’Antonio – 26 years in Product Supply and HR; and Cinzia Gaeta – 34 years in P&G Italy in Legal Department up to Vice President- General Counsel Southern Europe.
“Since retiring four years ago, I’ve been actively involved with Seniores Italia Lazio, collaborating with senior expert volunteers who are committed to helping people in need and are united in trying to create a society with more equal opportunities. The project, Cooperative 4 Female Empowerment in Madagascar, will economically empower women in the village of Ambalanjanakomby with investment and training. What’s more, the positive and income generating work practices being implemented in Ambalanjanakomby will be copied by other villages in the vicinity, multiplying the impact of our work.” Giampaolo Calcari
About 2,000 people live in the village of Ambalanjanakomby, a remote village in northern Madagascar. Almost all of them – together with additional 10,000 people in the entire rural municipality – live in poverty, cultivating very low-income agriculture products using poor farming practices.
In the “Cooperative 4 female empowerment” project, SIL is helping create a “social cooperative” that starts and runs income producing businesses and empowers women. The project will help the community develop and grow a poultry business and provide working capital for the purchase of chickens. The project includes farmer training and the purchase of equipment needed to cultivate new and better revenue generating crops.
The $16,000 grant will be used to acquire a ten-year lease for the chicken coop land; construct the coop and fencing; purchase the chicks, feed, vaccines and cages; and provide training in chicken breeding and marketing. Plans include training 25 people, creating 12 new jobs and impacting almost 250 family and community members.
Which Came First – The Chicken or the Egg?
“Our objective is to provide job opportunities to women with income generating activities and employment. We are creating an activity that includes a laying hen farm that is working well. I can say that we are achieving our objectives, despite the Covid-19 situation and the drought we had.” Mrs. Sabine