Reorganization of Intercultural Library and Selam Palace Surgery

Project location: Italy, Rome
Project start date: June 2016 - Project end date: June 2017
Project number: 2016-019
Beneficiary: Associazione Cittadini del Mondo Onlus

The intercultural library of Cittadini del Mondo Association was established in a disused basement of a school in 2013. When the local authority gave the Association permission to use the basement it was in a very poor state of repair; the Associaion renovated it with the aid of private funds.

Over the last two years the intercultural library has developed and extended its activities to include five courses of Italian for migrants and a much frequented social help desk. In addition almost every week the library organizes events aimed at promoting multiculturalism, such as lectures on art, documentary films and book presentations in the presence of authors.

The aim of this project, which received a grant from the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation is to renovate and enlarge the intercultural library in order increase and improve the activities carried on by volunteers, as the social help desk (opened twice a week), the Italian language courses, the meetings with important book writers and so on. At the same time the project's aim is to improve the tools of the Selam Palace surgery in order to give to the volunteers doctors better instruments for their activities.

Regarding the intercultural library the works just started and in almost 4 months the spaces for the Associations activities will double. The mission of the renovated library will be the same: to promote multiculturalism and help migrant's integration. However in the renovated library there will be new spaces dedicated to children (volunteers will improve the activity of helping with homework), to students (with an internet station), to the social help desk (in this way it will be opened more days per week).

Thanks to Nando Peretti support the intercultural library work started as soon as the Public Authority gave the permission. The first step of the works started and it is related to the window construction and the safe exit and to the electrical system, than shelves and bookcase have been bought.
 
Regarding the surgery at Selam Palace, thanks to the project fund, the Association could implement the activities of our Clinic in Selam Palace. From a medical point of view, it has created a specific focus on hypertension: using new sphygmomanometers the doctors could start a blood pressure monitoring of the Clinic users, identifying at an early point hypertensive patients and starting a careful follow-up procedure. The follow-up procedure was divided in several steps: first, check up at the following controls; secondary, identification of possible other risk factors and exclusion of secondary form of hypertension; then, organization of a possible therapy (behavioral or based on drugs); finally, periodical checking of therapy effectiveness. A proper cardiovascular risk evaluation through Body Mass Index calculation was made possible by the newly purchased weight scale with altimeter. In this way, the doctors took care of 30 hypertensive people; two of them were pregnant women.

Moreover, the recently bought fridge has allowed an appropriate maintenance of some perishable drugs. In particular, doctors could store adrenaline phials during the anti-influenza vaccine program (adrenaline is a life-saving drug that has to be used during the unlikely event of a post-vaccine anaphylactic shock).

The Association's volunteers also created a women-and-children tailored service inside the Social Help Desk. Cittadini del Mondo's volunteers identified families at risk of vulnerability; thanks to this fund, they could provide these families with nappies and milk powder. The Association's Help Desk took in charge 25 families (social services addressing, school iscription of children, medical assistance, nappies and milk distribution...); 18 of them was composed by single women with child/children at risk of vulnerability.

The whole activity of the Help Desk/Clinic in Selam Palace was improved by the purchasing of the computers: all the procedures of the users' take-in-charge (i.e. information finding and recording) have become easier and faster, resulting in time spearing during the front office activities.
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