Fondazione Massimo Leone onlus

SDGs 10 Reduce Inequality

Fondazione"MassimoLeone"onlus(FML),establishedin1994,aimstoprovideaconcreteresponsetotheproblemofthehomelesspeopleintheCampaniaRegion.Itsaimistoassistpeoplewhofindthemselveslivinginastateofsocialmarginalityasaresultofaseriesofstressful events that have caused them to lose their own home. They provide the following services to their target groups in the Naples area:

• health and medical assistance in a small clinic, a poli-specialist health centre. It welcomes Italian and foreign patients who are in serious poverty and are unable to access health care otherwise;
• occupational therapy workshops, a psychological counselling service, a legal assistance service and an internet point in a centre who works as a one stop shop;
• a residential service which encourages them to get back to the domestic dimension.

FML has also a small Study and Research Centre to promote knowledge of the phenomena relating to homelessness and spread a culture of homelessness that could overcomes stereotypes.
Since 2009 FML has started a series of vocational training courses, including a course in collaboration with the "Pizzaiuoli napoletani" Association.
The activities aimed at rehabilitating and reintegrating the person are coordinated by a team of psychologists, counsellors, mediators and social workers. They also collaborate within the FML in the different areas of intervention:
- Teams of volunteer dentists and medical specialists (cardiologist, dermatologist, orthopaedist, psychiatrist, infectious diseases specialist, surgeon, ophthalmologist, gynaecologist, nephrologist).
- Street lawyers (in criminal and civil law). 
- A group of volunteers who daily support the operators in the accompaniment and implementation of personalised projects.
FML is at the centre of an operational network involving the main public and private organisations on the national and local territory, which fight against all forms of extreme poverty.
 

PROJECT

We want to encourage people to support in particular the health care services they provide for the main following reasons:
● FML is the only place in all Region Campania where people in need could receive complete dental care
● FML is one of the few places in Naples where people in need could access to health care services for free and where they won’t find the legal, bureaucratic or social barriers they can find in public hospitals
● FML collaborates with the local branches of famous national NGO such as Emergency, NGOs who manage first receipt centers for asylum seekers or camps for refugees and other NGOs who assist homeless or people in extreme poverty conditions. These NGOs send the people they assist to the Clinic of FML in order to make them have dental or health care.
● FML before the Covid-19, which disrupted the timetable of the clinic and the availability of all the service, was used to provide dentist and health care services to about 1,000 homeless and people in need in a year
● Dental and health care services are usually very expensive, in particular in the Covid-19 period, where the costs for safety and hygiene are significatively increased.
● All the doctors and dentists work as volunteers, while one of the social workers of the FML spreads herself on different services, helping in scheduling appointments, welcoming people and coordinating the volunteers. FML does its best to operate in an efficient way, addressing most of its budget to the direct services for their target groups.
● FML is aiming to increase the number of people they can take care of, the level of services provided and reduce waiting time to receive assistance. They just rented a new place to set up a new clinic where they can have 2 dentist rooms, larger space for the doctors and more equipment. The FML already covered the equipment needed, so right now they’d need support for their operational activities. The budget needed would depend on the number of people they could take care of and with more consistent donations it is possible to consider increasing the number of people assisted.