On September 11, 2004, the international Association Women of the Mediterranean have launched a public initiative named “A future for Beslan” in favour of the children and the families of Beslan in North Ossetia so tragically struck by terrorism. We want to assure them that they are not alone: the help comes even after the emergency.

We want to involve and to sensitize the Italian and the international public opinion throughout this initiative, and our Board of Directors will be the spokesman of it with the Italian Government for its support, besides the collaboration of our 27 Ministers Guarantors of the Mediterranean countries, recently elected.

We would like that those children and their families could be able, if to not forget, at least to assuage their pain with our help and contribution, and we would like to help them to overcome this moment of serious psychological difficulty.

We bound ourselves to assure at least a year of solidarity to those families for their various necessities, through an economic fund, and the Association Women of the Mediterranean will be the guarantor (a banking current account dedicated to the initiative has been activated, on which people can give a contribution), and to place at their disposal services and assistance of different kinds: first of all the psychological support to the involved persons, with the help of psychologists and psychiatrists who already worked in similar situations (wars, great natural disasters, Ground Zero, the primary school of Stockton in California in the 1989, etc.).
Other actions will come besides the central core to face their daily demands, and we are determining them with our actual partners and with others joining, who offered their collaboration.

The project has been structured with different kinds of interventions to offer them a support above all to face the “after emergency” in the long term, which is a critical moment for the characterizing great sense of abandonment and loneliness.

We illustrate some details of the project:

We have opened a special banking current account, for the discretional money contributions:
c/a number 10000 registered under the name of
Donne del Mediterraneo - ONLUS , Progetto "Un futuro per Beslan"
Piazza della Vittoria 14/16 A - 16121 Genova (ITALIA)
on the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro,
IBAN IT31 I010 0501 4000 0000 0010 000 SWIFT BIC BNLIITRR

or on the postal c/a number 14229165
registered under the name of Donne del Mediterraneo – ONLUS
Piazza della Vittoria 14/16 A - 16121 Genova (ITALIA)
IBAN IT88 F 07601 01400 000014229165
stating: Progetto "Un futuro per Beslan".

We have the patronage of the Presidency of the Italian Senate and of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, and we’re waiting for other official patronages (Presidency of Council of Ministers, etc.).

In cooperation with the Italian Red Cross, an educational training course to restore the normal psychological conditions through the treatment of the post-traumatic stress syndrome, especially dedicated to the sanitary, emergency and safety operators and to school operators. It will be done with the help of local psychologists, psychiatrists and children’s neuro-psychiatrists, and with the participation of other local operators, to create self-help groups. The training course could be held with a brief stay in the city of Beslan. The guiding lines for psychological support expressed by the Federation of National Societies of Red Cross and Red Crescent will be used in this occasion.

This project has also the aim of creating a permanent Italian task-force within the Italian Red Cross, particularly devoted to the psychological support in similar emergency situations, to be used in the future for psychological support actions and educational interventions in Italy and abroad.

A programmed action of the VII° Local Socio-Sanitary Unit of the Italian city of Treviso to support the families of Beslan, which consists of a reconnaissance on the local territory made by an integrated Staff (psychologist, social assistant, psychiatrist and cultural mediator) to locate those families who show a severe clinical picture referring to the post-traumatic syndrome, and to offer them a psychological support aimed to restore living conditions to sufficiently be included again in their own social environment. The action includes also the hospitality of these families in Italy with the help of local trained families.

We verified that the opinion of the head physician of the Right-Bank district hospitals is that the question of psychological aid to victims stands today as the most important. Some of the former hostages do not communicate with doctors. The relatives of the victims of the terrorist act are the first who need the psychological help today. The republic has a shortage of psychologists and specialists who can deal with post-traumatic syndrome. They say that today the most effective treatment is to leave Beslan using different rehabilitative programs.

We are going to sensitize, jointly with the Italian Red Cross, the citizens and the Italian public administrations to the hospitality in our country of the children of Beslan and their families for brief vacations connected with rehabilitative therapies in the next future. The Municipality of Trieste (Italy) has already given its availability on this specific part of the project, together with others.

The foreign seat of the Association Women of the Mediterranean in Montenegro has given its availability, too.

Thanks to the cooperation of Morocco, with our councillor Najima Thay Thay Rhozali, Secretary of State for the Literacy and the non-formal Education of the past Government of Morocco, professor in the University of Sorbone in Paris, of Lille in France and of Agadir in Morocco, we will co-ordinate an action aimed to re-elaborate the trauma of the children of Beslan throughout the game tool of the tale, on which the councillor Rhozali has a great international experience. A similar action will be carried on in co-operation with the Italian Red Cross in the Italian schools, to open a debate on the traumatic experience connected to the Beslan tragedy and on other critical events of childhood.

There will be a preparatory course for the teachers of Beslan’s schools to make them easily work of the psychological and pedagogical project named “The tale as mediator of the dramatization and of the overcoming of the critical situation”. The project is composed of 5 parts and is scheduled in conclusion:

• the publication of a collection of tales created by the children of Beslan (its title could be “Love for life will win terrorism”);
• the performance on stage of the tale elaborated by children both in their own country and in other foreign countries, starting from Italy.

It is necessary, before starting the project of the dramatization of what they lived, to enable teachers and parents to face unfit behaviours of children, and in some case of themselves, referring to the revisiting of the trauma in a dramatic and theatrical key.

We intend to sensitize the Italian students of every level, involving schools so as to establish and to carry on friendship relationships and exchanges of letters, little gifts and drawings with the children of Beslan, always with the aim of emotionally supporting them.

Joined initiatives on the Italian territory to find institutional and private partners ready to offer to the population of Beslan different kinds of equipments (medical, sporting, etc.), didactic and technological tools, for the two new constructing schools and for the other pre-existing ones.

Considering that in similar situations many families lose one of more sources of income and for this reason, besides the depression for the critical event, can emerge also an economic depression, we are arranging the formalities for the creation of local student's grant, special distance adoptions of whole family cores or of single individuals, distance training courses. One of our partners in this part of the project will be the Network Nettuno (the first television and telematic University in Europe, using two satellite television channels, the Euro-Mediterranean leader as Distance University, which operates in collaboration with the Italian Telecom, the Italian National Television, etc. – www.uninettuno.it).

Referring to our long-lasting relationships with the Central Italian Public Institutions, we asked ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities) to co-operate with us in the communicational process to involve the Italian Public Administrations in the project.

We are verifying the possibility of organizing one or more national performances with the presence of medias, to sensitize the greatest number of people and to collect the necessary funds to carry out the project.

The Municipality of Trieste, in co-operation with other partners, organized a solidarity initiative on November 22 named “The wings of freedom”, inviting all the children of the city to present the children of Beslan with their own toys, messages or drawings on the themes of solidarity and friendship among children of different nations. All the given gifts have been handed over to them personally by the Association Women of the Mediterranean and by the Italian Red Cross Committee on the occasion of the festivities of New Year, during an humanitarian mission in Beslan on December past.

With the cooperation of the University of Genoa, Faculty of Architecture, we made a DVD of presentation of the actual situation of the population of Beslan, with pictures and movies taken during our mission there in December past, and with the drawings that the Beslan’s children gave us. We aim at organizing many events in the Italian cities during the next months to sensitize people and to spread a message of peace and friendship for this population, trying to build together a better world.

We are arranging other initiatives with our President, the Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation Hon. Fayza Aboulnaga, with our Board and with other partners.

Genoa, January 20, 2005