We are committed to providing everything they need to go to school: backpacks, books, pencils, notebooks, uniforms. Our vocation as Marianist friars is really education, and so in the Otonga project this component could not be missing. Mario was a child of the forest with my own eyes, one day I saw him carving a beautiful little bird from a piece of wood, and so I sent him to study in Carrara and today he is a great artist - but there would be many others worth mentioning. The results are amazing: one of them, Mario Tapia, has become a sculptor and has even made a marble statue of an Ecuadorian saint, Santa Mariana de Jesus Paredes y Flores it’s placed in one of the niches surrounding St. The Otonga Foundation has set up a long-distance adoption project that helps hundreds of children with their studies. "Thanks to education," explains Brother Giovanni, “these children will have an alternative job and instead of being loggers, they will help me conserve forests and biodiversity. Thus, we came up with a another idea: give them scholarships to involve them in nature conservation projects. However, says Friar Giovanni, in places like this, torn apart by poverty, corruption and crises of various kinds, you cannot save a tree and neglect a poor child who does not have the means and opportunities to study. The problems are still there, from the bureaucracy down to the woodcutter who in the night steals a tree from the Otonga forest, but every day I thank God for the strength he gives me and how he manages to pave the way! In short, it went like this: I started buying forests to fulfill the dream of others then I fell in love with that dream which became my own."Įducational projects and long-distance adoptions So many problems that I have faced with serenity and perseverance. I confess that I was carried away by the donors’ enthusiasm and had not remotely imagined the headaches of this undertaking: lawyers, notaries, land registry clerks, land surveyors. It is not that I am a writer but it happened that the well-known mountaineer Reinhold Messner for a reason unknown to me did not collect the prize and it was donated to the Otonga project for forest conservation. I was even given a literary prize: the Gambrinus Prize. The first donor was also joined by a number of companies, headed by far-sighted industrialists. Then came a further donation to buy more forest, with the sole purpose of protecting it. So, I used the money to buy as many hectares as I could with it. Our dreamy guest returned home and sent me the first remittance, in the old lira, to make the purchase. I simply replied, 'You buy it and so it will be protected forever.' I did not think of the consequences! But my friend seemed really pained he asked me how that treasure could be preserved and prevented from being destroyed. He was quite upset so I explained to him that poor people live here and probably someone was trying to create a small cattle farm without trees. While we were intent on contemplating the beauty of the place, we heard in the background the disturbing noise of a chainsaw: evidently someone was cutting down trees. One day I had a visit from an Italian biologist he wanted to see the forest and I accompanied him. In those years, I was working in the faculty of Invertebrate Zoology as a lecturer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, in Quito. "The story of Otonga is like a Christmas story. Friar Giovanni, the ‘professor’ as they call him in Quito, is no longer a youngster, but he has no lack of determination and is driven by a true lifelong passion that keeps him going.įriar Giovanni Onore at work at the Otonga Foundation in Quito, Ecuador For forty years, he has lived and worked in Ecuador where in 1997, he created the Fondazione Otonga or Otonga Foundation, to defend from destruction the forest located on the western slopes of the Andean mountain range, and at the same time, to preserve the region’s rich plant and animal biodiversity, while also providing education to local children. Giovanni Onore, 82, a Marianist friar from Costigliole d'Asti, holds a degree in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Turin. Do you know why? Because I had to make more of an effort to seek beauty, without taking it for granted." Then I learned to look at the world in another way, and it seemed even more beautiful. A blood clot in an inoperable spot, nothing could be done.
There and then I was frightened, and called the doctor he prescribed some tests, and I found out I had a thrombosis in my optic nerve. "One day I woke up and was completely blind in one eye.
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