Hotel Indigo Rome St George and Crowne Plaza Rome St Peters helped local charity Associazione KIM as part of IHG’s Giving for Good Month, with hotel chefs preparing food, staff organising games and a children’s entertainer putting a smile on faces.
The Associazione KIM hosts children and their mums while they have treatment in Rome’s hospitals. The families are from countries where treatment is more difficult or impossible, and at any time there are up to 20 families in the home, which is run by volunteers.
As well as visiting the house for the day, the hotels donated the proceeds of their Christmas Raffle to the home to help contribute to the maintenance and management costs of the association.
Guendalina Scavia, director of sales and marketing at the two hotels said that the charity was chosen because it was local and would allow staff to become involved regardless of their skills or what department they worked in at the hotels, from sales and housekeeping to front office, reservation and maintenance staff.
Whether helping to entertain the children, preparing the food or helping with gardening, the day was popular both with the children and their mothers and the 20 staff, and further activity days are planned to continue the relationship.
“It was rewarding and enjoyable,” says Guendelina, “though in some ways it is not easy to see children with those conditions such as leukaemia and confined to wheelchairs. Nevertheless, instead of seeing themselves as unlucky, it was great to see how the children could still smile and be happy in their own way, and there was real joy in sharing some time with them.”
“In the past we have chosen different charities each year to help, but this we have found to be the right one for us because we felt we could be useful and we will carry on the collaboration and are planning more visits so we can get more involved with the organisation, perhaps with helping with the gardening, repainting and helping in the kitchen as well as preparing food.”