Milan, November 20 (Adnkronos) – “The Anita Challenge aims at the well-being of children, more precisely in the age group between 0 and 6 years, in the entire reference area of the Cariplo Foundation, namely the Lombardy Region and the two provinces of Piedmont, Novara and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola. The first actions will start from cooperation with the third sector and with the world of research”. These were the words of Laura Anzideo at the presentation of ‘Anita – First Childhood’, the ‘challenge’ of the Cariplo Foundation of which she is coordinator, held at the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.
The Foundation’s new program is dedicated to children aged 0 to 6 and promotes accessible and child-friendly services, spaces and culture, helping to combat the growing gap in this age group. “In January we will launch an appeal called ‘Anita’s call’, and it will have two lines: ‘Anita calls for research’, to provide evidence regarding the well-being of children in our country, and ‘Anita calls for innovation’ so that the third sector, Municipalities and all entities dealing with childhood can propose their models for providing support and attention to the world of childhood”, explained Anzideo. “Minors – he added – are currently the poorest people in our country and Anita aims to reach at least a third of the 70 thousand boys and girls who are in absolute poverty in the regions where the Foundation operates and to support their way of life. Being in absolute poverty often means not being able to access educational services, not having all the tools to grow, be happy and secure, it also means not having enough caloric and nutritional intake, a condition that is common among these 15 thousand children.”
“We – Anzideo concludes – will try to work together with the network to fight poverty by intercepting it from birth and postnatally. This network will involve not only the third sector and the Municipality but also the health and social sectors and society. One of the first actions we will take is to provide support to this network, for example at the Mille Giorni table in Milan, a cross-sectoral working group dedicated to the first 1000 days of a child’s life”.
