On the wave of such strong emotions, this month of September seems to be still full summer, both for the temperature of emotions, and for the tight rhythm that the ABF agenda continues to impose (and that only the long days of sunshine would seem to offer the time necessary to accomplish).
Having the need to put everything down in black and white, to reach and visit you through our regular newsletter, I will try to rationalize the amount of initiatives the Foundation is carrying on. All good news, thank God, but mentioning them all, one after the other, makes us reflect on the force that the support of all of you gives us, allowing us to achieve ever more important goals.
Here are ABF activities, according to their subject, in this ‘hot’, late summer. We still have, in our eyes and in our heart, the images of the Voices of Haiti, on their first European tour: sixty Haitian children, in addition to twenty companions, for ten very intense days. An extended family that has joined Andrea and all of us for an exciting, unforgettable journey…… From the greetings to Pope Francis to the opening of the Florentine Foundation named after director Franco Zeffirelli, to the thrilling debut of the choir on the stage of the Teatro del Silenzio. I would like you to live the emotions of this adventure, first hand, reading the testimonies, the interviews and the ‘travel diary’ of the tour that ABF has prepared for you.
September has been, for four years now, the month in which we host “Celebrity Fight Night” in Italy, a charitable event whose profits are destined in part to the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center and partly to the Andrea Bocelli Foundation. The culmination of the current edition, which will take place in Rome, is a great concert that, Andrea together with Elton John, will hold inside the Colosseum and that will be aired, prime time, on Rai Uno Channel on September 15th. This will be an important showcase for our fundraising campaign through solidarity SMS (at N. 45523, by landline and mobile), linked to the ABF project “Educate to Grow”, which will run from 6th to 18th September. A solidarity competition, where every single euro collected will be devoted to ABF educational projects in Haiti, (with the five active schools and over 2500 children whom we follow in their studies), but also in Italy. In fact, mid-September, we will begin work on the reconstruction of the comprehensive ‘G. Leopardi’ school in Sarnano, one of the areas most affected by the August – October 2016 seismic swarm.
As part of the “Challenges” program, finally ABF will co-sponsor, from September 7th to 13th, the First International Robotics Festival, a major scientific event that will be attended also by our president, Stefano Aversa, and our Director, Laura Biancalani, both engaged in personal interventions, and by Andrea himself, who will take part in a concert with a robot conducting from the podium.
Hoping you will appreciate the insights offered by this newsletter, in the certainty of having you still alongside, in this passionate adventure (which I like to summarize in the simple phrase: “doing something good for others”), let me say goodbye to you all.
Veronica Berti Bocelli
