In
2019, the efforts of nine local businesses led to the creation of Fondazione
Policlinico Sant'Orsola in Bologna, which this year therefore celebrates its
first five years of activity. A
participatory foundation that helps make the hospital a more welcoming
space and keep the quality of its care always at the cutting edge, thus
benefiting the whole community. For FARE INSIEME Charity, Lucrezia Lanzani
interviews Stefano Vezzani, director of Fondazione Policlinico Sant'Orsola.
FARE
INSIEME CHARITY is the spin-off of the FARE INSIEME project dedicated to the
presentation of some onlus and non-profit associations with roots in the area
around Bologna, Ferrara and Modena and that carry out extraordinarily important
and crucial work for the entire community. Here are some of their stories
by Lucrezia Lanzani*
“Improvement:
becoming better, promoting more befitting conditions, doing things better.
Actively: everything we do has the aim of improving conditions". The
donations of nine local businesses, which have now become thirteen, led to the
creation in 2019 of Bologna’s Fondazione Policlinico Sant'Orsola. And this year
it celebrates its first five years of activity.
“The
promoters are committed to making an annual contribution to support the
foundation’s running costs, from its headquarters to its staff. In this way,
100% of each donation goes to the project for which it was made: a guarantee of
transparency that has helped to attract more and more people and businesses and
to achieve many goals to continuously improve the level of patient care through
a network of volunteers, citizens and companies,” says Stefano Vezzani,
director of Fondazione Policlinico Sant'Orsola.
The
involvement of the community has allowed important projects to be developed,
such as early speech intervention for children with Down syndrome, a project
that has been so successful that it has grown from the initial nine children to
more than forty today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Foundation launched
the “Più forti insieme” (Stronger Together) campaign to support healthcare
workers by offering subsidised transport, accommodation and home shopping. In
2024, Fondazione Sant'Orsola launched a fund-raising campaign to renovate the
building that houses the Women's Cancers Day Hospital, with the aim of
transforming it into a welcoming space for patients where therapy can become a
less harrowing experience. “Every year, around 1,200 women come to Sant'Orsola
to be treated for gynaecological or breast cancer. We accompany them day-by-day
on this trying and complex journey, demonstrating the city's affection through
the colours of the walls, the greenery of the plants that will grow and
transform the rooms into small gardens and the new technologies to counteract
the side effects of treatment,” Vezzani continues.
Fondazione
Sant'Orsola's most important project is Casa Emilia that welcomes over 400
patients and their families who arrive in Bologna for treatment from all over
Italy every year. The house has 19 small flats and communal rooms, including a
large terrace, where they can hang out with other families and volunteers,
giving each other strength and overcoming the isolation often often
characterises care away from home. A fund-raising campaign has also been
launched to create the “Parco della Luna” (Moon Park), a space that will be
built in front of the paediatrics ward next to the wellness garden called
“L’Isola che non c’è” (Neverland) for the children on ward 13. “This covered
space will allow us to offer activities like pet therapy or music therapy in a
peaceful and accessible environment even when the weather is not conducive to
being outdoors. Music therapy is an important activity that has long been
present on the paediatric wards of Sant'Orsola: initially introduced in 2006 by
maestro Claudio Abbado and then continued by the Mozart 14 association, in 2022
the baton passed to Fondazione Sant'Orsola which now runs the service,
extending the programme to six wards, and introducing a workshop dedicated to
mothers and newborns, a course for people with Alzheimer's and mutual support
meetings for family members,” the director notes.
Other
projects developed by the foundation include “Provo a dirlo con un libro” (I’ll
try to say it with a book), which offers patients of the Policlinico the
possibility of receiving a book as a gift, and “L'acqua e le rose” (Water and
roses), the first wellness centre opened in a public hospital in Italy with
showers, a bath tub for assisted bathing, a barber's shop and a hair stylist.
“Small things, like a book or a haircut, help us improve the conditions of
patients at Sant'Orsola,” explains Stefano Vezzani. Commitment, generosity,
sharing, roots in the territory, looking to the future: these are some of the
key concepts of Fondazione Sant'Orsola which continues its daily commitment to
fund-raising to support activities and research that contribute to making the
Policlinico a centre of excellence and a national point of reference.
*Lucrezia
Lanzani is a student at the Steam Emilia High School. She is sixteen years old
and has always been interested in social issues. She has been volunteering for
three years in different organisations in her community.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
Read the other interviews
