For many years, Dante Alighieri has undertaken numerous initiatives, interacting with the community, helping those most in need, improving schools in the country’s poorest suburbs with restructuring work, donating bursaries to deserving students and, through its charitable works, encouraging progress, increased social inclusion and the fight against poverty.  Poverty is one of the principal things that causes people to feel marginalised, not having access to health services, social services or work is a cause of social exclusion. And in rural areas, people are four times more exposed to such exclusion compared to people who live in built-up urban areas. 

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In keeping with this care for those most in need, a wonderful initiative was born  at Lourdes Mission Catholic Church in Umzimkulu, part of the Koinonia Giovanni Battista Foundation in aid of the children of the religious community.  Day after day, amid myriad difficulties, they strive to tend to a local community that has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world and in which more than fifty percent are unemployed.

This is an ambitious project that aims to revitalise a rural area suffering the effects of some ruinous social problems, with a very high level of unemployment and a worrying incidence of AIDS among the local population. “We would like a Dante Alighieri that plays an active role in change and social progress, that is a driver of the development of an open society that is respectful of diversity and ready to cooperate,” said Tony Amatulli, coordinator of the Dante Alighieri Society of Durban and President of the Dante Alighieri Society of Pietermaritzburg. 

“We’re grateful to Dante Alighieri Society for this day,” said Polish-born Sister Weronica in perfect Italian. “It’s not easy to offer hope to people afflicted by many serious problems, in a vast territory that stretches for many miles but which offers very few services and very little work. We hope that such support comes along year by year, and makes us feel less alone.”

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