Manuel Roales, air traffic controller and delegate of the Vicente Ferrer Foundation:
“Solidarity is a drug that creates habit… but it gives you pleasure”
We’ve just come back from Madhudi, in the area of Madakasira (India), a few days ago. Madhudi is a village with over one thousand inhabitants, where we have opened a water treatment plant that has been paid, in its totality, by us, air traffic controllers. It was part of the project “Control Canarias 2012” and it costed 20.000€, and even though the plant has been operational since May 2013, it hadn’t been officially inaugurated it until now.
Over the centuries, people in Madhudi, mainly women, had to walk 8kms every day to the nearest well. It took them 2 hours to go to the fountain and another two hours to come back, carrying over 15kgs of weight over their heads. This meant that over half of the population spent their lives just walking to carry, with a lot of suffering and pain, water of a very poor quality that caused diarrhoeas and other illnesses… but it was all there it was.
Now, they have a water treatment plant in the village, and clean water available at their doors. They have more time to work in the fields, to study, to play and to live. Forever, and for next generations to come, we have given freedom to over 500 women. They touched our shoes with tears in their eyes, and they ran their hands over their faces over and over again in a gesture of eternal gratitude. We too, once again, cried with happiness.
This costed me, and all the colleagues that participated in this wonderful project, 200€. Don’t you think it is worthwhile?
I strongly encourage other collectives (doctors, architects, pharmacists, teachers, farming cooperatives, boards of trade, factory workers and any others) to do the same and help improve their lives. It is so easy, and we can do so much with so little…
In this sense, we have decided to make a further step and organise an annual collection, to make it easier for everyone, which we call “AENA Workers’ Solidarity Day”, in which staff donate part of their wages to charity.
I warn you, though: solidarity is a drug that creates habit… but it gives you pleasure.
