The project "CasAurora for Meyer", financed by Unicoop Firenze through the notice "Nessuno Indietro", has started. CasAurora, the guest house/residence of the Adventist Church, provides the Florentine hospital with a room in its building, free of charge, until the fund is exhausted.
Florence is one of Italy's most important cities of art, but it is also known for the presence of important hospitals, the pride of Italian healthcare. Specifically, the Meyer University Hospital is one of Italy's most important pediatric hospitals, and many families come to Florence from all over Italy to provide their children with appropriate care.
The economic crisis due to COVID-19, unfortunately, has made it more and more difficult to support the living expenses necessary to provide the right care for their children in a city like Florence, generating despair and distress in the families.
"CasAurora stands by families forced to travel because of health problems,” explains Ester Murro, director of CasAurora. "Thanks to the project, the Meyer pediatric hospital has already started to send to our facility the first families who cannot afford the cost of accommodation needed to accompany their children for treatment. We are happy to collaborate with Meyer to help those who are in difficulty, especially given the historical period we are going through."
Unicoop Firenze is one of the seven major consumer cooperatives in Italy, and has always been involved in large-scale food distribution. Faced with the pandemic emergency in 2020, together with the "Il cuore si scioglie" Onlus Foundation, it promoted a call for proposals whose objectives included supporting poverty, distributing funds for a total of 1.35 million euro. CasAurora received a contribution of 10,000 euros for the project shared with the Meyer pediatric hospital.
"Unicoop's contribution gives us the opportunity to further help families experiencing hardship. In the last year, we have also activated the emotional support service, which our users can access free of charge," adds Deborah Giombarresi, psychotherapist at CasAurora.
"We are a growing structure," says Gioele Murittu, the structure's administrator. "CasAurora has the ambition of being a significant reality in the area, in response to the ever-increasing needs for health mobility, and aims to improve its services more and more, opening them up to as many people as possible. We welcome the wish of Dr. Zanobini, Director General of the Meyer University Hospital, that the collaboration between the two facilities will continue to grow and strengthen over time.”
CasAurora is a hospitality facility located on the campus of the Seventh-day Adventist Institute of Biblical Culture of the Seventh-day Adventist Christian Church of the Italian Union, in Florence. Since 2014, it has been hosting the families of hospitalised patients, having also entered into special agreements with the hospitals of Careggi and Meyer and with the Ulivella and Glicini nursing homes, health centres in Florence's District 5.