Stories of people
“Whoever, on the path of life, has lit even just a torch in someone’s dark hour, has not lived in vain.”
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Dedicated to Maria
Maria, a 17-year-old girl from Anina, whom we met in 2011, seriously ill with a badly deviated intestine due to a presumed tumor, abandoned in her bed at home, very thin, with little hope of survival, with an alcoholic mother, an unreliable father and other siblings in miserable environmental conditions and without health care.
We manage to activate a good and generous doctor from Timisoara who manages to have her hospitalized again. The surgeon declares that the intestinal deviation operation was useless and therefore dangerous. The tumor, incredibly, was not there.
A new recovery operation, a long hospital stay continuously followed by us who cover all the necessary expenses, makes her improve but the return to the family environment does not help her and instead leads her to a deep depression.
We take action again and thanks to the association of dentists of "Overland for Smile" we put her disastrous teeth back in order.
Thanks to our friend Davide who owns a small costume jewelry workshop, we manage to find her a job. Maria quickly finds meaning and purpose. With the money she earns, she leaves home and becomes independent.
She works hard and begins to think about a future. She stays with Davide for almost a year, then she has the opportunity to go abroad to take care of an elderly woman like many do in the area. She bravely leaves and enters an unknown world. Then she accepts other similar jobs that teach her to take care of others, cooking, cleaning, etc... She keeps in touch with us via the internet. and... she learns German!
She lives with her Romanian boyfriend who joins her. He finds work as a driver and she does the cleaning. But the best thing is that she picks up her little brothers with their mother so that they have a better future there, and go to school regularly, and she helps them as much as she can with her earnings. Then she finds work in a hospital; cleaning operating rooms and in the evenings she goes to school to learn to be a nurse. She understood how important education is and she goes back to school, which she abandoned in Romania. Then she also wants a driving license and she succeeds.
In 2016 she gets married and the future smiles on her, and we are so happy together with her.
Dedicated to Violeta
Here is the letter she received from her, in 2019:
<<My brother had kidney problems and my mother was fighting with our father for our legal custody. Everything was chaos!
Gianluca's arrival was a gift from God for us. With the help of Gruppo Il Giocattoli, every time we were sick I went to the doctor (even in Italy, 6 times!).
Every time they came to Romania they didn't avoid stopping by, they always came to do the shopping and gave my mother money to buy us what we needed for school.
Thanks to them, for a period of 6 years I managed to stay in a boarding school where the costs were quite high, about 400 lei per month.
My first flight was with Gianluca and Rosa. For us, childhood was a constant struggle. I never knew how to thank you, but I learned something from you: - school comes first and education plays an important role in life; - if you offer help, give it from the heart; - don't expect anything in return if you help someone.
For a long time I didn't understand: why do you help people without expecting something? Instead I came to understand that when you bring a smile to the face of a troubled man, you are twice as happy!
As long as we are healthy we can do everything we set out to do, if you are able to think then you can go very far, there is no limit!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for absolutely everything and I hope I can give back.>>
From the sewers of Bucharest to a more peaceful life
Dedicated to Dorin
Born in 1972 in Hunedoara, he grew up in an orphanage because he was immediately abandoned, going around different institutions; he is illiterate because he never attended school.
Already as a minor he wandered around many areas, sleeping in stations and trains (one of the so-called "stray children", numerous in Romania at the time), in parks and in sewers to have the heat of the district heating.
He obviously has situations of mental handicap and various tics of nervous origin.
No affection, no one who took care of him. Consequently, he has no trust in others.
He devoted himself to theft and drunkenness. Despite his condition as a minor with a handicap, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a cell with 100 other inmates, in unimaginable conditions.
Once released, he continued his life as a stray until he contracted tuberculosis and ended up hospitalized in a sanatorium.
We met him in 2010 while he was wandering around Bradet, drunk and mocked like a village idiot.
He slept in a miserable shelter without water or electricity, protecting himself from the rats by spreading stale bread on the ground so they wouldn't climb onto his cot.
Since then, little by little, he has been assisted and cared for, trying to teach him first of all the need to wash himself and follow the minimum hygiene rules, to eat with cutlery.
We put up with his violent outbursts.
We also tried to teach him to write and read, but the important thing is that for the first time in his life he has had affection, to the point that Rosa calls him "mom".
He periodically returns to the sanatorium for treatment. Now he can read and write with his limitations, eat with cutlery, connect to the internet with a cell phone that we donated to him, demonstrates an unexpected honesty, in short, he lives a minimally decent life, light years from his previous life.
Not having had a childhood he is attracted to stuffed toys.
Our associates who know him are very fond of him, also because he is smart and has very nice expressions.
Dorin made us understand that those who have not known love cannot give love but when someone (usually the parents) takes care of him with affection the situation changes radically and you can face the change.
Thank you Dorin, in reality we are the ones who have learned a lot from you.
Dedicated to Beniamin
Here is Beniamin's letter, received in 2018:
<< I come from a large family of six children with a life that was not always simple but still beautiful for the harmony between us. I am the second eldest. Looking back I realize only now how poor we were, living in an old house made of mud and wood, with only two rooms of which, in winter to save wood, we used only one. I understand now that I did not dare to dream of something better and I wondered if there could be concrete hopes for our poor family. I clearly sensed how limited we are from a material point of view: we only know how to live.
My parents worked hard. Dad in the factory and mom in the garden from which to earn their living, with our help as children. But they taught us to be industrious and, united with each other, to love each other.
The first meeting with "the Italians" (that's what we children called you), had a deep impact on our hearts as children, filling us with happiness. We were happy with the food and toys we received (I still have a toy car for my children today!). I had never met foreigners who showed so much affection and care for us. This gave me hope. Knowing that someone, even if far away from us, loved us so much already did us a lot of good. I remember that our parents were asked what they needed. It was extraordinary that someone came to us to ask about our needs. For a long time I didn't understand why. My parents asked and were satisfied! I remember the happiness in seeing the refrigerator, the mower (n.r: an old but perfect BCS) and the Ciao scooter.
Everything was well thought out by the "Italians" so that we could evolve. The refrigerator was to preserve food well. The mower to cut our grass for the animals and at the same time be able to work for the neighbors' fields from which we really had good income in the family. The scooter was used to allow my father to go to work 8 km away and, later, for our entertainment as children.
It was truly a blessing. I can say that after our parents, the "Italians" were the most important men in our lives as children.
Thanks to your intervention, God gave us hope, he opened a downward horizon for relationships between men and not only for the material goods received. We children felt your affection very well.
But things did not end there. After a certain time, God's heaven opened and a great blessing arrived in the family: we received the news that the "Italians" wanted to build a house for us! We experienced such a great emotion that it is impossible to describe it. The reality was incredible. We who could not even dream of what others in the village had, we who receive a house as a gift? How can you understand something like that? Who has ever experienced a similar event? And why us? Why? It was incomprehensible to me for a long time and only after many years did I begin to understand.
Now I understand that you Italians have been a valiant instrument in the hands of the Lord. Even now, after many years, I am amazed at how God has worked in our family through you. What impressed me and filled my heart with great happiness was seeing an entire team of Italians who, with us at their side, built the house. What an incredible scene. There would be so much to say for these unforgettable memories.
I learned from you that making people happy makes them happy. You were happy to give, probably even more than we who received. God does not leave us as we are but wants us to change. I have certainly not been the best child and the best but surely when we understand what we get from God, he changes us. As he changed me. I understood how God uses good people to do good so that we, in turn, change our life from material to much more spiritual. He wants us to free ourselves from every bond to make us truly happy. I have been freed from many things that degraded my life by protecting me from falsehood, dishonesty, etc. And I understood all this through you "Italians". I am convinced that you have radically changed the direction of our life, making us better and more altruistic.
This has become our motto: "be a giver and not a receiver". You live by this motto. Today I live to help people in a material and spiritual way. Why? I don't know but I truly believe that it is a seed that you "Italians" have placed in us. I have received another great gift: my wife Areta and our child Avraam. We feel indebted to God and we are happy.
We love you "engines" of all these beautiful things. Praise be to Jesus. >> Beniamin currently lives in a multi-confessional Christian village of about 90 people, where he works as an operational agronomist receiving in exchange for the sustenance of his young family. It is a place where you can breathe harmony and sincere brotherhood.
Dedicated to Gabi
Gabi, abandoned by his parents, we found him part of a Roma family (the uncle who had accompanied himself with his sister-in-law) in one of the usual situations of great hardship: a dilapidated and unhealthy house in a small village. After trying to help the entire large family, responding to a timid request from a fragile twelve-year-old who simply sensed that he could not have a future in that degraded environment - thanks to the omnipresent Maria Grazia who supported the expenses for years - we found for him a Battista college in the city of Resita and so Gabi was able to begin his school career, slowly recovering serious deficiencies but above all living in an adequate context to learn the basic rules of a normal life.
Almost every week we had direct information on his progress and above all a precise list of expenses. Our presence "as an adoptive family" was constant. It was not easy but we always succeeded.
After finishing middle school, at his request, he went to the technical school in Caransebes where, in three years, he learned motor mechanics. There too, he was followed with our periodic visits and by appointing a tutor to manage expenses (always supported by Maria Grazia), in private accommodation.
After finishing vocational school, we lost contact with him and feared that the boy had "lost himself", to the point that we thought our efforts were useless. Instead, last year we had the pleasant surprise of knowing that he had returned to his home of origin (in the meantime abandoned by his uncle) with his young partner and a beautiful little girl! Now he is able to support his family, practicing his job as a mechanic and, thanks to his acquired manual skills, he has started to renovate the house, turning it into a normal and well-equipped home.
He is very grateful for what our association has done for him. And we are happy with this recognition, but the greatest satisfaction is seeing, over the years, the results of the "sowing". Thanks to you, Gabi.