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Teresa Sarti and the story of love for humanity

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March 8, 2022

Today "International Women's Day" is celebrated all over the world. This year we want to do it with the example of a great woman: Teresa Sarti, founder of Emergency.

"If she were here today she would say 'the world has turned upside down'. It was her way of saying when someone seemed to ignore even the most elementary principles”. This is how her husband Gino Strada remembered her on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of her death.

True Love for Humanity

Talking about Gino Strada and his wife Teresa Sarti is telling the story of love for humanity. They met in 1971 in Milan: he was a young medical student, she was a teacher at school. Together they understood that they wanted to become a family, they married and after eight years they had Cecilia, the only heir to their immense humanitarian work.

Allies in the struggle for the rights of all humanity, they founded Emergency in 1994, when Gino Strada was an established surgeon. They understood that the world of volunteering could not be just an activity on the sidelines of their respective jobs, but a life project.

Thus Emergency was born, to provide care and assistance to civilians injured in wars, in particular to the victims of anti-personnel mines, and to train local health personnel. Teresa Sarti was the first president of the organization and was committed to ensuring that the activities could reach numerous countries (among others, Cambodia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Afghānistān, Rwanda), dealing with the training of local health personnel and construction of hospitals, first aid stations and maternity centers. Emergency's role has become central in promoting campaigns in favor of peace and the defense of human rights.

Teresa Sarti died prematurely in 2009, but her example teaches us that we must never abandon the hope of building a better world, even in the midst of atrocities.

There is and never will be a right war.

This year for us, "International Women's Day" is dedicated to all women and to peace, which, perhaps not surprisingly, is a feminine noun in Italian.