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 aim of creating a symbolic bridge between the students and the town that welcomed them during their training,” states Francesco Silvaggio, Chief Operating Officer of the Augurusa Foundation. “As ‘tree guardians,’ 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 several years now, the Augurusa Foundation has been triggering a real turnaround to position territories like Filogaso, attracting talents from Italy and abroad who are ready to relocate there to serve the local community and build the foundations of a global community from there.
Great applause and thanks for this morning dedicated to nature, fun, and environmental awareness also comes from the Municipal Administration of Filogaso. “Today is a special day; we’re not just here to plant trees, but we’re here to plant a connection. A connection between those who chose Filogaso to develop 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 initiative’s creators, highlights: “Planting a tree is a symbolic gesture that enters into the roots of a community, and the Augurusa Foundation’s choice is to transform 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 become great because it manages to donate the land where these trees’ roots will sink, representing the passage of students who came to Filogaso and who will have a true moral obligation to remain connected to this community and to the Foundation in particular.”
