Sandro Calvani

Sandro Calvani
Born	1952 Genoa, Italy

Sandro Calvani (born 1952), is the Senior Adviser on Strategic Planning for the Mae Fah Luang Foundation (under Royal Patronage), Bangkok, Thailand.

He dedicated his entire professional life to studying innovation, creativity, the effective methods of change management, conflict management and prevention. In countries where he worked, Calvani has given priority to strengthen freedom and justice that he considers the two greatest expressions of individual rights and collective rights.

Calvani began his professional career in 1976 at the University of Genoa, Italy, as a young researcher affiliated with the National Research Council, engaged with extra-nuclear genetics studies of single-celled organisms. In 1978 he was one of the youngest winners of a Fulbright Hays scholarship to advance his studies at Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. During his work as a visiting scientist at the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory, CSU, he became interested in issues of sustainable rural development and completed one of his first book Third World Prophet to disseminate complex issues of sustainable development in poor countries. Back in Italy in 1979, as a volunteer expert of the Italian Caritas he became interested in the emerging topic of migrations across the Mediterranean and opened in the Genoese harbour the first center providing facilities for foreigners and illegal migrants in a seaport, in collaboration with the then Anti-terrorism Prefect extraordinary General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa.

In 1980 he was chosen as the first lay leader of the Italian Caritas and as the first head of the Caritas department for international humanitarian aid and sustainable development. He contributed to the national campaign for the reception of boat people fleeing from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War; he contributed to the first national law on conscience objection to the use of small arms and weapons and to the creation of the first courses for the objectors to military service.

Following the severe earthquake in Irpinia in November 1980 Calvani helped to create the first European relief network for natural disasters, in collaboration with Guido Bertolaso. For two years Calvani coordinated the foreign aid of churches all over the world to support victims of the earthquake in southern Italy. Calvani in 1982 was elected representative of the Italian foreign aid NGOs at the Directorate General for Development Cooperation of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the European Commission and the European Parliament in Brussels. In the 1980s Calvani worked with advocacy campaigns against hunger in the world designed by the Radical Party and the summer schools for advanced training on the values of politics, in cooperation with Romano Prodi.

...
Wikipedia