Rome (NEV), February 8, 2021 – The requests for the Waldensian Eight per thousand funds keep on increasing confirming a constant growth in the last three years, especially for cultural activities, (from 443 to 626) and for the promotion of the well-being and growth of children and young people (from 531 in 2019 to 661 in 2020 and 747 in 2021). In the period from 4 to 25 January last, non-governmental organizations, non-profit associations and organizations submitted online their application for funding, detailing the projects and activities for which they need financial support.
In total, 4914 applications were submitted, of which 961 for abroad projectd and 3953 for Italian ones (there were 3573 in 2020).
“The 2021numbers tell us that the third sector is rightly concerned about the effects of the pandemic producing a directg effect on the requests for funding we received”, confirms Manuela Vinay, in charge of the Eight per Thousand Office of the Waldensian and Methodist churches. In this trend – continues Vinay – we also find an attitude of increasing trust in the Eight per Thousand resource management system adopted by the Waldensian and Methodist churches. A system that, as it is known, excludes the possibility of financing worship activities and what is connected to them, but allocates the entire amount to social, cultural and cooperation programs. The funds available in 2021 – she concludes – sum to about 40 million euros that we want to ‘return’ to civil society, to those institutions, religious and secular communities, associations which, in this health and social emergency, carry out a valuable work of care and support, reaching the most lonely, the marginalized and invisible people”.
Now all the requests to the Waldensian and Methodist churches Eight per thousand will go through the examination of the preliminary phase: that is, the formal correctness of the applications will be verified, with respect to the guidelines of the 2021 call, which were published on the ottopermillevaldese.org website . Only correctly submitted applications will be assessed on their merits by a commission of volunteers who will soon start their work. The projects approved by the Waldensian Board will then be presented to the Synod, next August, and then the final list of accepted requests will be published on the 8 × 1000 web portal by September.
