Francis of Assisi and Carlo Acutis International Prize for an Economy of Fraternity is awarded to Caritas-Goa for their Project HOPE on 25th May 2025 at the Santa Maria Maggiore, Assisi. The Award was handed over by Monsignor Domenico Sorrentino, Bishop of the Diocese of Assisi, Stefania Proietti, the President of the Umbria Region, Fr. Roberto Genuin, the Minister General of the Friars Minor Capuchin and Msgr. Anthony Figureido to Rev. Fr. Sanford Rodrigues, Goan student-priest studying in Rome on behalf of Caritas Goa.
“HOPE” (“Healing, Opportunities, Protection/Protection and Empowerment”) was developed in Goa with an aim to support young people (but not minors) victims of abuse and at risk, some of whom are deafblind, by accepting their request for help through the call center and then providing them with specific training to create handcrafted and environmentally friendly products, such as toilet paper rolls, soap, handicrafts and biodegradable packaging, including customized eco-friendly hospitality kits, designed and provided according to demand. Project HOPE focuses on those who are often overlooked by mainstream economic models – abused youth, those with disabilities, and marginalized women. Project HOPE develops a new economic model by putting large scale operators like five-star hotels into direct contact with vulnerable members who in turn purchase items required by the hospitality industry made of raw materials that would otherwise go to waste – banana fibre, coconut husks and recycled paper. The approach is innovative and creative in that it derives economic value from the particular capacities of local communities. In a concrete expression of the fraternity’s capital, one of the best-known hotel chains, Taj Hotels, welcomed the opportunity to stock, market and sell the products. The state of Goa attracts around a few million tourists each year – and this number continues to grow – and is home to sizeable number of five-star hotels.
This year, the Award secretariat had received a record of 60 projects in five languages (English, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish) from 30 nations and 4 continents. Caritas-Goa was granted the Award after three rounds of scrutiny by international experts.
Filipe Neri Cardinal Ferrão, Archbishop of Goa and Daman expressed his happiness for the award which “creates a new model of economy: a different economy, one that gives life and does not kill, includes and does not exclude, humanizes and does not dehumanize, takes care of creation and does not plunder it’. The President of the Umbria Region underlined that it is “a gesture of hope because with these projects we tell the story of social innovation that does not stop at the desperation of misery but looks with hope to make an apparently unsolvable problem an opportunity for sustainable and integral development, work and growth”.
Fr. Maverick Fernandes, Director of Caritas Goa feeling deeply humbled about the International Award granted to Caritas Goa proposed to the Award Secretariat the intention to “form an international community of fraternity, of change-makers, inspired by the International Prize “Francis of Assisi and Carlo Acutis for an Economy of Fraternity,” through a WhatsApp group where information on formation, processes and management development plans will be shared with all the change makers that had applied for this award, but could not make it. He affirmed that we received this Award not to hold it, but to be its custodians, and in doing so, we hope that every act of healing, every life lifted, and every effort of fraternity through this mission will contribute to spreading hope (HOPE) in the world.”
In addition to the cheque for 50 thousand euros, Caritas Goa received the icon of the Prize with the depiction of St. Francis and Carlo Acutis and the scarf with the image of the undressing of the Poor Man, made and delivered by Brunello Cucinelli who recalled the difficulties of today’s society “of the increasingly widespread evil of the soul” but the possibility also with these initiatives to cure it.
Fr. Maverick Fernandes
Director
