In memory of Armando Grandi, founder and president of the Renato and Armando Grandi Foundation
There are men who pass through time leaving light footprints and men who, instead, carve it with the silent force of love, of the good they have sown. Armando belongs to this second, very rare group.
Founder and President of our Foundation, he based his work on the greatest pain a father can experience: the loss of his son Renato.
From that incurable wound was born not resentment, nor isolation, but one of the highest forms of love that a human being can express: the gift of self to others.
This is how the Renato Grandi Foundation, now the Renato and Armando Grandi Foundation, was born, not as a simple charitable organisation, but as a project of humanity, as a promise kept to the world: to transform tragedy into hope, solidarity and love, making helping the weakest the profound meaning of his existence And with generosity, vision and extraordinary moral coherence, he decided to dedicate his life to children, the most fragile and at the same time the most powerful, because in their eyes he saw not only the need, but above all the future, the future of the world.
Three pillars underpinned his vision: water, education, and health. Three simple words that enclose the essence of human dignity.
Water, without which there is no life, there is no health and is the primary condition for all human, social and economic development.
Education, an instrument of freedom and dignity, so that no child is condemned to ignorance, but is in a position to think, choose, love his country and himself, free and independent in spirit, a protagonist aware of his own destiny.
Health, which, like water and education, should be a universal right and which, on the other hand, even today, in too many countries, continues to be a cruel mirage that shatters dreams, limits destinies, steals childhoods and compromises growth, hope and the future.
These injustices were for Armando a cause of deep concern, an open wound, a shame that he could not accept, but also of tireless action. He never limited himself to observing; he acted with strength and vision, building, promoting and supporting concrete projects with a generosity that never sought recognition but changed the lives of tens of thousands of children in many countries around the world.
Today, thanks to him, tens of thousands of children can drink clean water, receive medical care, study, work and build their own future. Above all, they can regain what should belong to every human being: dignity. That dignity which is the gateway to respect and love. And only God knows how much, today more than ever, the world needs respect and love.
Armando would have turned 99 this year. There are people who seem to be born only once every hundred years: true giants of altruism, living examples of what it means to be men to the end. His life fully represents this century of dedication and light. He is the emblem of these one hundred years, of a life dedicated not only to himself, but also to others.
For all of us who have had the privilege of sharing a part of our journey with him, we can only be proud and honoured witnesses. Witnesses of a silent, discreet, never ostentatious greatness, which never raises its voice but is profoundly incisive, which changes the destiny of entire peoples. Witnesses to a man who transformed pain into light and, through his works, memory into future.
Armando is not just a name engraved in the history of a Foundation. He is the heartbeat that continues in every child who regains health, education, hope, who smiles; in every drop of water that saves a life; in every hand that reaches out to another hand.
And as long as there are people willing to love as he loved, Armando will never truly have left this world, but will continue to live on in every gesture of solidarity in the footsteps he left behind, an example that will inspire new hearts to choose goodness.
Fabio Rezzonico, Vice President