The Casa della Carita is a foundation that aims to give social and cultural assistance.

It has an office in Milan, in an old school in the Crescenzago neighbourhood, given from the Comune of Milan and restored thanks to the entrepreneur Angelo Abriani, it was inaugurated on November 24^th 2004.

The Foundation, which began in May of 2002 on an initiative of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, has as supporters the mayor, and archbishop of Milan and is overlooked by don Virginio Colmegna.

The building that holds the office where all of our activities are done, feel like a home, not a shelter. The people we welcome are guests, not users. We don’t provide services to the people, but nurture relationships.

We take care of the needs of our guests and assist them with healthcare and provide legal council. We help them find a job and a home.

Promoting independent paths is our main goal; we don’t believe in assisting in a chronic way that patches the problems and then people depend on the system, but we want to promote independence and show that the people, who we consider at the brink of society, can become an integrated and important person for developing the community.

Everyday, at Casa della Carità we take care of hundreds of struggling people; families without homes, young immigrants, mothers with children and people with mental health problems.

We try to be open doors for the city, and to do it free of charge.

We operate to guarantee these people rights, health and work and with them we want to build personalized paths that help them become autonomous.

We can host 139 people in our structure in via Brambilla. The others, who we cannot receive, we offer to them fundamental services such as a shower and a change of clothes. Others we offer apartments we run, or in the urban favelas of Milan.

The Casa della Carità is also a social and cultural laboratory where knowledge and competence meet. This allows us, using our experience, to reflect on the complexity of the metropolitan reality of Milan and to elaborate of the ways we can improve it.

The cultural dimension of the Casa della Carità does not only service the Milano territory, but has been for years doing international work, thanks to the Study Center for Urban Suffering and the important involvement of important European projects. The international comparison opened our eyes and made us discover that the countries that are considered poor, we can learn in which they were helped and apply that to our context.

To continue offering free hospitality, which is a main part of our goal, we need support from everybody, big or small, private or businesses, public or personal.

Our numbers (from 2004 to 2012):

Listening and taking action in the day time:: 45,211 between interviews and showes. The house is open to the public from Monday to Friday for people to come in and voice their concerns and struggles and to get a shower.

Taking in: 1592 people, of 90 different nationalities from 2004 to 2012, Everyday the house welcomes 139 people in which we can add another 136 in the 31 apartments the foundation manages. In 2012 we took in 201 people.

Medical visits: 11,295.

Seniors helped: 27,678 people.

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Official Website www.casadellacarita.org