Youth Education Centers are protected facilities open 365 days a year 24/7 that host children and young people between 0 and 20 temporarily taken away from their families due to social, educational and/or psychological issues. They are referred to as “protected facilities” because they guarantee specific and individual support and because only authorised people can have access. In Ticino alone, these centers accommodate more than 350 minors (2023 data), of which 200 have permanent residency.
Since 2020, Medacta for Life Foundation and My School Ticino, in cooperation with ATFA, have been running an important charity initiative for the centers in December. Thanks to our Christmas initiative, all guests in residential care receive a thoughtful gift.
In 2020, 2021 and 2022, My School Ticino and ATFA promoted the Solidarity Boxes initiative: a charity collection where each boy or girl was given a gift box (precise instructions were given with regards to content) or a gift card, depending on the age. Alongside Medacta for Life Foundation, the initiative was warmly welcome by many supporters who brought to My School Ticino or ATFA the boxes for the Youth Education Centers, or participated in the purchase of gift cards through a financial contribution.
For Christmas 2023 Medacta for Life Foundation followed the indications suggested by the Heads of the centers: to better meet the needs of the children, we set up a fundraiser whose sum was then donated to the centres according to the number of guests. The Managers of each centre allocated the funds received to the purchase of special goods either for the individual guest or for the facility: a doll, a warm jumper, books for reading, board games or a table football or ping-pong table for a game in the common spaces.
The same amount was donated to the Red Cross immigration centres in Ticino, with a total of 185 unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. Migration Division – Red Cross Ticino.
Furthermore, the fundraising was particularly successful and the Foundation decided to allocate part of the proceeds to the SAE service (Support and Educational Accompaniment Service) which looks after needy families with minors in Ticino.