VOLONTARIA MENTE -Italian Red Cross in the time of COVID-19

VOLONTARIA MENTE Volontaria Mente is a reportage made during the COVID-19 pandemic in the headquarters of the Red Cross in Loano (SV) Italy, published daily on IVG.it during the worst months of pandemic. The project was born from the Temporary Voluntary Service, created by the Italian Red Cross for the pandemic in support of the Ordinary Volunteers, which I approached at the end of March, as soon as I returned to Italy from Canada, where I lived for over a year. Along with the storytelling of the most intese days of the emergency, Volontaria Mente is born to be a more intimate and static parallel story that wanted to tell the human side of the Volunteers. Their moments of reflecting and relief, their minds elsewhere, lost in a suspended time between one call and another during the days that shook the whole world. A daily reporting of the Ordinary Volunteering, but also of the Temporary one, made up of citizens who came to help during the emergency and thanks to which the Red Cross was able to reactivate social services in support of the quarantined community. Alongside the work of health care professionals, more than 150 thousands of Red Cross Volunteers have served during the worst months of emergency, proving to be, and to have always been, essential for the Italian Health System For my volunteer and reporting activity, I had the honor of being awarded with the decoration of Cavaliere al Merito of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella.