Happy Birthday, GMA!
The story of an Italian NGO called Gruppo Missioni Africa-GMA
“I´m really attached to this organization for a lot of things, I love the person who are working there, I made an internship there, thank it, I improved a lot my personal knowledge”, Anna Stopazzolo says.
This Ngo is called GMA, Missioner Group for Africa was born 40 years ago and in the 2012 it and celebrated the first 40 years of activities…a long story for a little civil-society organization, that works in a little town in the north of Italy.
GMA is formed by laical volunteers –workers who are engaged in the promotion of international solidarity such as through volunteers work, supporting villages´ and development and poor-emarginated population.
The main sectors GMA is involved in are formation and education, promotion of local development and women independence, defense of human rights, dialogue among different countries and populations; the activities are focused mainly in the Horn of Africa: in Ethiopia and in Eritrea, but also in Italy, working with schools and the civil society in order to promote human rights.
In 40 years GMA developed different projects…these are the results:
Project DONNA ATTIVA: 680 graduated women, 31 different villages where GMA has activated education courses for women, 20 centers for promotion of women development for 20k eritrean women engaged in it, 1300 women involved in micro-finance activities
Project with CHILDREN: 8040 foster children supported in a foster family , 9 houses for orphans and 6 family-home, 3 center for orphan and street children and 4 centers against malnutrition; they also build 24 schools and provided 700 scholarship for children!
Project WATER: GMA builds 23 hydraulics’ installations, 25 spring protection, 54 irrigation´s installations with more than 48 African’s village involved!
Project INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION: GMA promotes intercultural dialogue with workshops and courses in the italian schools and for teachers. There are 20 territorial groups all around Italy, organizes photos exhibitions and an annually meeting.
None of these objectives would be achieved without the commitment of women, men and all people who love GMA and support his work!
I have to celebrate a little bit myself…I´m part of GMA and I´m happy to be involved in this wonderful world!
Recordings: Maria Boggian and Laura Arici
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