Update from Vice President Norberto Bellini

An excerpt from an update email from our Vice President Norberto Bellini to members and friends of the organization.

Lately we have had some concerns regarding the agricultural development project we are doing in Ivory Coast with Don Ciotti’s Abele group. The November 20 bombing(press review), carried out in the Gran Bassan locality, had greatly concerned us because project coordinator Leone Devita lives in that area with his family. We learned that several people had been killed including Europeans, fortunately both Leone and his family were not adversely affected and the project continues. (Corriere della Sera article attached).

News about the Solidarity and Development Association branch in Paraguay and the projects being carried out there is positive.

On February 24, the cooperation agreement for 2016 between ASeS and the municipality of San Juan Bautista de las Misiones was renewed and signed; Luigi Esposito, our representative in Paraguay, signed the agreement together with the mayor of the municipality Juan Carlos Meza Medina, with whom there has been a fruitful collaboration for years now. The municipality has taken it upon itself to provide an agricultural technician to train the horticulturists and vegetable growers in the ASeS project who will then start the farmer’s market; in addition, the municipality has donated the land where the Giuseppe Politi agribusiness now stands. Part of the land has been put under cultivation and is being used as a model for the Fruit and Herb Growers Association farmers promoted by ASeS in 2012.

Those who would like more news about the work of the Paraguay Branch of the Organization can find it on our local website www.ases.org.py.

Norbert Bellini

Vice president