Mr President SR Nathan, Your Eccellencies the Ambassador of Italy Mr. Anacleto Felicani, the Ambassador of Thailand Mr. Marut Jitpatima, The Italian Trade Commissioner Mr. Massimiliano Sponsili, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, thank you and welcome to our Gala Dinner, that coincides with the 5th anniversary of the Singapore Chapter of the Pistorio Foundation.
Your presence here and your continued support to our mission is testimony of your generosity versus the children we support, and allows us to sustain and expand the reach of our mission.
Our planet is the home of humanity, and it is a splendid home. The human progress has made this home particularly safe and enjoyable for hundreds of millions of people. And this social evolution has greatly accelerated in the last 6 decades since the end of the second world war thanks to extraordinary technological progress and the prevailing of the economic model based on the " market economy and the globalization".
Unfortunatly, at the same time there has been a growing set of umbalances that have left billions of people out of the benefits of this economic and social development.
When we read the statistics, we are, and we should be shocked:
- some 3 billion people ( nearly half of the humanity) live with less than 2$ a day, and 1 billion of those live with less than 1$.
- some 30 million people every year die of causes associeted to starvation or malnutrion.
- and in the world there are several areas of tragedies like famine, genocides, niches of slavery.
And the picture is even more horrible for too many children:
- 1 billion children are deprived by one or more services essential to their development, or even to their survival.
- 150 million children are engaged in child labor.
- 8.8 million children die every year before their 5th anniversary from malnutrition or preventable deseases.
- 1.2 million children are trafficked every year.
We, the most fortunate citizen of the world, cannot tolerate those umbalances, and must be for all of us a moral mandate to correct them. And if we dont do it in a civilized way, than our present social model will be destroyed ( and deserves to be destroyed ) by a world tsunamy of human revolution.
Governments and various public institutions are adressing those issues, but the progres is very slow, because short term political interests tend to prvail on the medium long term interests of the braod human society.
I believe that the long term solution depends on widespread education and social awereness involving billions of people in creating a more just world.
And the children must be the center of our attention because they are the most vulnerable human beings and becuase they are the future citizen of the world that will drive the destiny of humanity.
The mission of the Foundation is to give a contribution to this process. This is why our motto is " On the way to school, on the way to life".
We are fully aweare that our efforts will be a minuscule fraction of what is needed, but for the children we can reach we can make a difference.
The Foundation today supports over 2200 children in the world, with the large majority in the Hill Tribes region in northern Thailand.
The Foundation operates under 3 basic criteria:
- We operate through a network of volunteers, and will always have very low overhead costs.Todate, we are still at zero structure costs. And when there will be the need to have some structure, our overhead costs will always be lower than 10% of the yearly budget.
- We operate in cooperation with local NGO's that share our principles and cost discipline
- We operate always in accordance with local authirities, but we do not have any poitical or religious affiliation.
Our mission is " To provide to underpriveledged children, basic education, basic nutrition, and basic health care ".
The educational goal is to assist them from kindergarten through primary and secondary education up to professional schools where they can get a degree that will allow them to find a decent and rewarding job, breaking the cycle of poverty of their families.
However, our ambition is to develop also the economic ecosystem of the poor villages in which we operate, sponsoring adult education, particularly for the mothers, including english language and basic computer litteracy, and stimulating and supporting small economic activities in the field od agricolture and handicrafts.
Our objective is to develop adequate economic independency in a time frame of about 10 years, so that the families and the local institutions can sustain the continuity of the education of the local children, and the Foundation can move to other villages.
In this model, the village of of Ban Mhai Patana' ( in the Chiang Rai province ) is the most advanced example, since it was the first in which we started to operate in late 2006. Every time I visit the village, normally once a year, I am very pleased to observe the progress in the direction we wanr to move: by late 2016 the village should be selfsustaining.
The same process is underway in the Huay Kuk village ( still in the Chiang Rai province ) that was cronologically the second we started to support in the region.
And we should consider that each of those villages serves also several surrounding villages, since we provide transportation for the children, or dormitories for those children that live in villages relatively more distant to make the daily round trip too long.
All this has been possible thanks to your support and the generous help of all ou volunteers, to whom I renew my warmest thanks in the name of our children. My thanks go also to the sponsors that have supported our mission in the last several years. And a special warm thanks go tonight to the artists Lilly and Mirko and the Cheng Ballet, that have donate to our evening a magnificent piece of their art and passion for solidariety.
The event of this evening will adress further projects in Hill Tribe region ( as my daughter will describe later ), and you know that all the proceeds from tonight go directly to our projects.
Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for your continous support and generosity in helping to build a better world.
