SOCIAL ASSISTANCE
La Meridiana, Il Paese Ritrovato - Monza (2024)
Il Paese ritrovato is the first village in Italy, born in 2018 in Monza, dedicated entirely to the care of people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. A small village in which people safely live in sheltered apartments but can move independently in the square, to the café, stores, cinema, church so as to lead a normal life, compatible with the disease, feel at home and receive at the same time the necessary attention.
Among the many activities carried out in the "Paese Ritrovato", Fondazione Canali Onlus supports the Arte che cura project. Art therapy includes the set of techniques and methodologies that use artistic activities with therapeutic means. The project focuses on the implementation of art therapy in the place of the "Bottega" of the "Found Country," which is a place rich in visual and sensory stimuli that transports the person with dementia into a familiar and, therefore, reassuring reality.
Where memory is not preserved so are emotions, which, being spared by the disease, can be welcomed, understood and stimulated. Art therapy proves particularly effective in providing relevant and rewarding experience for the person with dementia, as it allows them to express themselves, improve self-esteem, and connect with other participants in an inclusive way.
Dramatherapy, on the other hand, is a relational promotion intervention; it is a "protected social place" where to experiment with new communicative and socialization models and initiate caring work for self and group through shared emotions. Creative design and improvisation project the elderly forward through ideation and imagination, maintaining and developing residual intellectual abilities.
Dramatherapy works on different levels: motor, emotional-expressive, and cognitive with the aim of stimulating motor coordination skills, revitalizing the person by reactivating curiosity, encouraging creativity, and fostering self-expression and emotions through theatrical play.
MEDICAL RESEARCH
The Verga Committee’s research centre is one of the first in Europe to have developed a phase I/II clinical trial for the treatment of high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukaemia using specific T cells (CIK) genetically modified with…