Yet another good opportunity to recall Saint John of God’s motto as he walked the streets of Granada, begging for alms to help the poor, crying out, “Fate bene fratelli….. Do good, Brothers, do good to yourselves, by helping the poor”….

And here is a good example, which always drives the people attending the regular coordination meeting of the “St John of God Fundraising Alliance”, which belongs to U.MI.CO.I. “The Missions and International Cooperation Office of the General Curia of the Brothers of Saint John of God”.

The 23 November meeting was attended by representatives and experts from various NGOs and Foundations of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God: Fundação São João de Deus – Lisbon (Portugal); Saint John of God Development Company – Dublin (Ireland); Juan Ciudad ONGD - Madrid (Spain); AFMaL ONG – Rome (Italy); Association pour l’Aide aux Jeunes Infirmes et aux Personnes Handicapées – Paris (France), all working in the field of international cooperation in the less developed countries.

The Provincial Curia of Castile hosted the meeting in Madrid, Spain, at the headquarters of Juan Ciudad ONGD,  and the Director of U.MI.CO.I., Brother Moisés Martín Boscá, opened the meeting with an address of welcome to everyone, and to thank them all for attending. He also recalled that 25 November marked the 25^th anniversary of the foundation of Juan Ciudad ONGD.

Before moving on to transact the agenda, Brother Miguel Angel Varona Alonso (the Provincial Superior), took the floor to emphasise the importance of continuing to persuade and sensitise people to keep raising funds to be able to continue providing care throughout the world.

In the course of their deliberations, all the participants discussed the humanitarian work they were carrying out, to offer an overall picture of the enormous amount of work each one was engaged on, and to highlight the challenges of the future, in order to continue promoting the comprehensive health of people and development in resource-poor areas. The meeting reiterated the need for all requests for assistance to be drawn up sufficiently well to enable them to be circulated between all the organisations, coordinated by the U.MI.CO.I. office at the General Curia which was responsible for checking that all the projects were sound and were in conformity with the general guidelines.

At the end of the meeting, Brother Moisés Martín Boscá thanked everyone and announced that the next meeting would be held in Italy on 17 March 2017.