“It all started to be close to the elderly, those who belong to the third age group, in recent years we have found ourselves also close to families with difficulties, fragile young people who needed help. It’s nice to do this type of volunteering”. Auser in Novara has turned 20 and the president Maria Grazia Petterino takes stock. Every day the association’s volunteers take care of transporting people who need visits to places they otherwise couldn’t reach. And there are also those who dedicate themselves to listening: “We are about forty volunteers, mostly men drivers and ten women who take care of listening. I take this opportunity – says the president – to launch the appeal and invite new volunteers: of course you need to have a minimum of free time, but even half a day a week is enough, so as to be able to satisfy all the requests”.
In 2023, the association traveled 160,000 kilometers and Petterino thinks that by the end of December 2024, the distance could almost be doubled: “We think that the members, always in the third age group, are about 800, to these are added another hundred users or so through the Municipality. There is a lot of demand”.
Maria Grazie Petterino has a dream in the drawer and it is also very clear, “perhaps known,” she says smiling, “we would like to have new premises with spaces for social health clinics, taking a bit of the example of Borgomanero. After all, we are in the health sector. It is not easy because the bureaucracy slows us down, but we start little by little, starting with new premises to host us. Many people care about what we do and could collaborate with us”.
