Dignity of work and attention to the person

A 92-year-old person died on February 23. Alberto Longanesi from Bagnacavallo (Ravenna) with an experience first as co-founder and president of an agricultural cooperative and then thirty years in Upper Volta and Burkina Faso as a volunteer. I would like to underline the traits of his service that characterize many professionals like him because they have had an impact in past years.

It is quick to say volunteer but it is less easy to give substance to volunteering. Longanesi has managed to combine the dignity of work with attention to the person. His style has kept him both in the cooperative in Bagnacavallo and in his long period in Africa. Nothing had changed except the gratuity in his work in favor of the least. He was of few words but he certainly didn't lack the energy, strength and competence to carry on the works for the benefit of water as a source of life where there really was no water. At the beginning of the 1970s, I recall the satisfaction of the general director of Italian cooperation, Ambassador Giorgio Giacomelli in evaluating the works resulting from his commitment. Precisely thanks to the results that the L.V.I.A (International Association of Lay Volunteers) had achieved, the Italian Government had decided to enhance water works for the benefit of the local community. A financial commitment by the Directorate General of Italian Cooperation which had reached ten billion Italian lire. A working method that was then followed by the local Caritas because it managed to put together a participatory approach of the population with the use of earthmoving vehicles. One thing did not exclude the other but hybridized the way to proceed. Not an easy thing at a time when there was a desire to distinguish the two approaches as incompatible.

The work of the Cobrad Cooperative which had to carry out the great works for the construction of water containment barrages required the population to undertake to ensure both the hospitality of the cooperators (food, lodging), and to manually collect the stones necessary for the construction of part of the dam. It was evidently difficult to imagine that the population that had undertaken to do so would not then have made the best use of both the banks of the reservoir and the downstream part for horticultural crops. How many barrages built in this as in other countries of the Sahel have I seen abandoned because the population had not been adequately involved. How many hours did Alberto spend with the others from the LVIA explaining under the tree to the village committee the prerequisites for obtaining the construction of a water works. Not a work that rained down from above but that involved everyone's dignity.


Gianfranco Cattai
NP March 2023