THE IDENTITY OF THE ORGANISATION
THE ORIGIN
The origin is an event, a burning point which, at a certain moment,
unleashed someone’s freedom.
The origin of our Organisation has a precise identity: “With Catholic roots”, as the Foundations’ Statutes state.
“He who saves a single life, saves the entire world”, as the Talmud says, quoted in the film Schindler’s List.
The first life to save is my own, here and now. Our Organisation did not come into being to respond to the needs of others, but paradoxically to mine, so that we can then respond to the needs of all those we encounter.
This is the origin of the Organisation: the attempt to systematically respond to a need that compels one’s life in the present, here and now.
Desire!
I have dragged you through the streets;
I have desolated you in the fields;
I have inebriated you in the city;
I have inebriated you without quenching your thirst;
I have bathed you in moonlit nights;
I have taken you everywhere;
I have cradled you on the waves;
I wanted to fall asleep on the ripples…
Desire! Desire! What must be done with you?
What is it you want?
When will you tire of this?
André Gide, The Fruits of the Earth
“…we must use every opportunity, every occasion as a chance to increase our own self-awareness
What good is our Foundation if it does not make human beings more human?”
Daniele Nembrini, Fondazioni in corso d’opera (Foundations in Progress)
The statue of Icarus on all the premises of the Organisations inspired by Matisse’s Icarus, represents the spirit of our endeavour: it might often be wrong in its approach, but it is always driven by a burning heart tending towards the infinite.
CHARISMA
“Talking about the ‘charisma’ of the Organisation is a little embarrassing for me, because it is a word that also pertains to other orders of magnitude; more specifically, I am referring to religious charisma. Just to clear up any misunderstandings: I don’t think I have religious charisma; but the Organisation I founded does have a charisma of its own, and the first person who has to come to terms with it is myself. As Matisse once said about the chapel in Vence: ‘This chapel was not something I wanted; it came from elsewhere.’ I perceive the very same thing in front of our Foundation: it does not come from me, but from elsewhere”.
The charisma of the Organisation is the experience I am having and propose to my closest collaborators and to everyone: a living humanity, the encounter with Christ and life as a duty. In a word, I would like everyone to encounter Christ; I am devoting my life to this.
Daniele Nembrini, Fondazioni in corso d’opera (Foundations in Progress)
In our work, we always keep in mind the admonition of Jesus: ‘The poor you will always have among you’ (Mk 14:7). So we know that no matter how hard we try to respond to the need we encounter, we can never solve everyone’s problems.
So perhaps the most important contribution we can make, more than responding to a need in the strict sense, is to accompany those we meet to an awareness of self.
In fact, very often, if you help a person to realise who he or she is, the most is done: how many times do people, when they have rediscovered their own dignity, find work themselves…
The question for me is increasing the awareness of who I am; and consequently the explosion of desire.
Every day I continue to go to work with this desire: may I become more and more aware of who I am, and may my contribution lead everyone we meet to become aware of who they are.
Never would I have imagined, when I first went into Calcio, that this could become the only reason for doing what I do: as if my profession was to offer a possibility, to those around me and then to everyone, of self-awareness, through commitment to the work we are given.
ARTICLE 2
The most concise and aware formulation of the nature, purpose and working directions of the Foundation can be found in Article 2 of its Statute.
We therefore feel it is important to quote it in its entirety.
OPERA
Fondazione San Michele Arcangelo is an Opera, i.e. a reality that wants to contribute to the mission of the Church. It is also structured and managed according to a business logic, but not for profit, but with the purpose of social utility, to which any operating surplus is redirected.
CATHOLIC ROOTS
RELIGIOUS SENSE
The Foundation, which is Catholic with regard to the experience from which it originates, addresses the religious sense of man, that is, that core of irreducible evidence and needs – of truth, justice, happiness, love – that constitutes the ‘heart’ of the human being.
THE PERSON
The purpose of the Foundation is to promote the integral realisation of the person, accompanying and supporting, through the rediscovery of the religious sense as a criterion for personal action, the natural inclination towards self-fulfilment, the apex of which is freedom, understood as the full satisfaction of one’s desires.
BEAUTY
The Foundation’s actions are also characterised by:
- the experience of beauty – present in nature and in human cultural, technical and artistic expressions – as the possibility of a journey of discovery of truth and one’s own desire;
PARTICIPATION
The participation of all those who share its purpose in the construction of the Work and the realisation of the common good;
TRANSPARENCY
Transparency of internal and external relations and of information management, to promote the sharing of the Foundation’s aims;
MODERATION
The style is marked by sobriety, an attitude that indicates the pre-eminence of the other as good for oneself and is expressed in an essentiality and reserve that is an attention and service to the other;
SUSTAINABILITY
Commitment to development according to a logic of sustainability, inspired by the criteria of an integral ecology, which unites the human, social, economic and environmental dimensions;
WORLD
Openness to the world as a fundamental aspect of human and professional growth, which opens the mind to different experiences and cultures and is also characterised by valuing encounters with the other.
THE METHOD
Unless people freely assume their own personal responsibility, the common good remains a pious intention or risks becoming a violent ideology.
Daniele Nembrini, Fondazioni in corso d’opera (Foundations in Progress)
In carrying out their activities, each Organisation and each collaborator is required to engage in a process of dialogical identification with the spirit that animates the Foundation. This process is carried out in three phases:
Asking for the Criteria:
which presumes a willingness to identify with this spirit
Exercising the Power:
which presumes a willingness to take risks
Sharing a Judgement:
which presumes a willingness to know
“Observe everything, tolerate much and correct one thing at a time.”
Bernard of Clairvaux
IT’S EXPERIENCE
“We, as Foundations, before dealing with needs, deal with desire. Using my desire, yours and that of those we encounter, and that is what makes us capable – in accordance with our capabilities – of taking their need seriously, without ‘reducing’ them to their need’.
Daniele Nembrini, Fondazioni in corso d’opera (Foundations in Progress)
Our commitment is to bring out the talents of individuals, nurturing the value of the Person and their desire through an invitation to gain experience. It is on the basis of these objectives that our motto ‘It’s Experience’ originated.
In order to emphasise the centrality of the Person, we have chosen to look at our students as Talents to be empowered, asking them to become the protagonists of their own paths and to participate intensively in training activities and correlated proposals.
In the same way, we call every collaborator an Educator to remind ourselves that each person, regardless of their specific job, is called to an educational duty, in which they are committed with all their humanity.
For us, educating means introducing to reality by giving a criterion for judging the experience, which brings into play everyone’s freedom and responsibility.
In this way, the inclinations of the Talents are revealed and grow due to the continuous interaction with their Educators.
