Lucia Vedani and welcoming patients and families
di Paola Raschielli
“Each of us can save the other, as long as we get involved”. These words contain the thoughts and actions of Lucia Vedani, founder and president of CasAmica Onlus, a voluntary organization which, since 1986, has welcomed sick people in difficulty forced to seek treatment far from home and their families. Originally from Bergamo, married and mother of four children, Lucia has made helping others her reason for living, opening 30 shelters in over 6 years, one of which is in Rome, a few steps from the Campus University Hospital Bio-Medical. “One day, while I was taking my children to school, I came across a man who had spent the night on a bench a few steps from a hospital in Milan – she says, retracing the path that led her to undertake the initiative of solidarity – He told me 'I'm desperate, help me' and there I understood that generous but sporadic help would not resolve the drama of so many sick people without means forced to seek treatment far from the warmth of their affections”. That man was the first of 100 thousand people hosted over the years by CasAmica. A name that embodies his mission: a place where you can feel at home, together with friendly people with whom you can share experiences, worries and joys. And it is the charisma of a woman, with an innate instinct to help others, that gives shape to a style of hospitality based on the values of sharing and solidarity. “Poverty and illness are scary. People tend to run away – she continues – Sometimes a smile is enough, words are not needed to empathize with those who suffer. The volunteers accompany the guests and create together with them a family environment where they can transmit serenity and good humor and where they can truly feel at home".
But how do you do it? “By transmitting inner joy. I have received so much from life and when you receive generosity, it is good to give it to others. There is more joy in giving than in receiving”. An appeal to benevolence, a theme dear to Joaquín Navarro-Valls who, when he was president of the Committee of Guarantors of the Biomedical University Foundation, the foundation created to support the activities of Ucbm, played a decisive role in Lucia’s decision to open the house in Rome. “Every act of benevolence – he said – is a gift for the one who gives, not so much for the one who receives, and the reason for giving comes from compassion, from sharing, from participating in the lives of others”.
