Augurusa Foundation: Creating the Roots of the Future in Filogaso

During Earth Day’s 55th anniversary week, the planet’s largest environmental
event, the Antonio Emanuele Augurusa Foundation joins in
celebrating Earth with an event featuring children from nursery, elementary, and
middle schools, young participants from its free Social Impact Manager Advanced Training Course, and
youth from its Virtus Lab model becoming active protagonists in protecting the
planet. With the planting of 20 trees in Filogaso (VV), the event in collaboration
with the Municipality of Filogaso and the Sant’Onofrio Comprehensive Institute aims to be a
laboratory for the care of territories and communities.

“As a Foundation, we feel we must build a community narrative aimed at
embracing the ethics of places, nurturing their emotional connection, and recognizing their value, creating shared moments
like today’s. We want to send a signal – each of these
trees belongs to the citizens who host it and to the children and young people who symbolically brought it to
life through the act of planting,” states Francesco Augurusa,
President of the Augurusa Foundation. “The tree symbolizes those who, arriving in Filogaso,
choose to keep their hearts here even if they physically leave. This is how
we want to build the return to the educating community that is emerging, born from the
town’s community that welcomed these young people and from the community they helped build as a class
group.” It’s about building the return of young people – who are training in
Filogaso – through a promise to commit to care, and about building the return and “staying” of those who belong to these places by birth
through the development of new opportunities, cultural and work stimuli, making those who dream of elsewhere feel that internal areas can still be livable.

“Today we planted twenty trees with the goal of creating a symbolic bridge between the
students and the town that welcomed them during their training,” says Francesco Silvaggio,
Chief Operating Officer of the Augurusa Foundation. “As ‘guardians of the tree,’ the children
will have the task of protecting these trees over time, growing alongside them, and
protecting this bond with the promise and commitment from our students to
return to Filogaso.” For a few years now, the Augurusa Foundation has been triggering
a real change of direction to position territories like Filogaso, intercepting talent
from Italy and abroad ready to relocate to the area to serve the local community and
build the foundations of a global community from there.

Great praise and thanks for this morning dedicated to nature,
fun, and environmental awareness also come from the municipal administration
of Filogaso. “Today is a special day; we are not just here to plant trees, but we are here to plant a bond. A bond between those who chose Filogaso to
train as individuals and professionals and those who were born here and grow every day.
These 20 trees that will be planted represent hope, a promise of care,
respect for the land, the environment, and the community,” emphasizes Councilor Maria
Condello.

The ceremony organized by the Foundation triggers a reflection on the role of education and
information in promoting sustainable development. As sociologist
Francesco Rao, one of the creators of the initiative, highlights: “Planting a tree is a symbolic gesture that
enters the roots of a community, and the Augurusa Foundation’s choice is to turn pain into good, putting down strong roots where there is an open and
willing territory or community. Filogaso is a reality that, although seemingly small, knows how to be great because
it manages to provide the ground where the roots of these trees will sink, representing the passage of the students who arrived in Filogaso and who will have a true moral obligation to remain linked to this community and to the Foundation in particular.”