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Remarks by Dr. Francesco M Bongiovanni
 Your highness, Madam Deromedi, Madam Nursalim, it is with great emotion that I can see you here!
When we started this project, what we want to achieve was to show "the people of Nias that they are not alone in this world,"
that far away… half a world away, somebody is thinking about them, and I think we have achieved that.
We've done a lot of work, but still a lot of work needs to be done: We are going to do it with the same commitment as when we first started; we are going to see this project through until the last house is built, and the last family in Sirombu comes into a new home; and we are going to build schools as well as clinics to make this an integrated community.
The most important aspect is teamwork, and I think there are two sides of teamwork that we have to keep in mind. One is that we started first in Monaco. We are very happy that we have managed to bring in people from different ways of life, companies, and NGO's--even Monaco Red cross, companies like Mecaplatz Plus in Monaco, in which all the workers tightened their belt for certain period of time and reduced salaries to cut down the costs, so they could make a very important donation. We have also had an old lady who sent us donation for $20.
It is just beautiful to see this all coming together. We have meeting every week in the basement of our office. Our committee was really informal; there were people from banks, companies, the Red Cross coming to discuss the idea of how we were going to raise money and what not. This is the team on our [Monaco] side.
What gave us a lot of confidence in going to this project? Because we saw the
response from your [Indonesian] side that was very professional and systematic.
This made us feel that we have somebody on the other side that really can
respond to the needs of this project in very concrete ways to make it worth the
investment of our time and resources. We've been very impressed with your team.
I can say that everybody among Monaco's NGOs has never seen something that is
done so systematically, professionally and precisely.
So, with this, we know that we are going to go forward together and that we are going to see this project through and really hope that one of these days, we are going to Sirombu together.
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Overview
Remarks by
H.S.H Prince Albert II
Remarks by
Dr. Francesco M Bongiovanni
Welcoming Remarks by Cherie MK Nursalim
Group Photo
Photo Gallery
Sirombu Housing Project updated, Moving-in of the First 14 families
UID and Partners Relief Effort for Aceh and Nias
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