Support for Mountain Farmers, South Tyrol

Those who had not seen it for themselves would not have believed it. In the heart of Europe — in a prosperous European community where food was being destroyed under state subsidy and live cattle exported with the help of grants — bitter poverty still persisted at the close of the last century.

In South Tyrol, away from the well-trodden tourist routes, there were still people living in conditions that the older among us would recognise only from the years immediately following the Second World War.

From 1972 to 2012, working together with friends in South Tyrol who brought cases of particular hardship to our attention, we did what we could to help.

Project team, from left:
Sepp Telser, Sepp Peer,
Michael Hellrigl, Eduard Platzer

The refurbished home
of a large family

We supported students who, as orphans or half-orphans, would otherwise have been unable to continue their education, and we helped to restore dilapidated houses in which ten or more people were often forced to live together in cramped quarters under conditions of hygiene that are scarcely imaginable to us.

On our regular visits we could see for ourselves how necessary our support was, and we were always moved by the gratitude of those we were able to help.

As in recent years we no longer encountered cases of genuine hardship, we agreed with our friends in South Tyrol to bring this project to a close and to direct the freed-up funds to others in need. In all, we provided EUR 0.7 million in support.