Mario supports the rehabilitation work of Casa del Sole Onlus, a non-profit organisation based in Curtatone (Mantova). Mario visited the children on the programme and saw for himself how rehabilitation activities with horses offer a way to increase their confidence. While he was there he too climbed into the saddle to try the exercises the children practice every day. www.casadelsole.org

Mario has donated his fee as international football testimonial for the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper, starring in a TV commercial and a print campaign, to the Cuey Machar Secondary School Foundation. This will make it possible to complete the construction of a secondary school for Sudanese children in the village of Cuey Machar in the south of the country, the birthplace of Mario’s friend John Kon Kelei, a former child soldier. It was his idea to build the school to give Sudanese children an alternative to weapons and fighting, because there was no secondary school in the village. Kon and Mario met in Milan in May 2010. Today Kon is a member of NYPAW (Network of Young People Affected by War) and works for the CMSF foundation, which has offices in The Netherlands and in Sudan.

Mario is also a supporter of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the international organisation that sends doctors to crisis areas throughout the world, including to countries involved in wars which have been forgotten by the media. This year, in order to help MSF and speak out against racism, Mario appears as the hero of a children’s book written by Luigi Garlando (”Buuuu”, Einaudi Editore) and now available in the Italian bookshops. Mario is donating his own earnings from sales of the book to the organisation, which provides humanitarian aid in about 63 countries, for people whose survival is at risk due to violence, natural catastrophes, war, epidemics, malnutrition, and lack of health care.

Mario doesn’t know how to say no when he has the chance to put a smile on the face of a child in difficulty or with health problems. He does so whenever he can and without making a fuss about it. And not just in Italy.

In Brazil, where he spent Christmas in 2007 and 2008 (as the guest of missionaries Sister Claudia Strada and Sister Raffaella Corvino, and the children who live in one of the country’s favelas), Mario supports the “Un Ponte per il Futuro” (A Bridge for the Future) project, which offers help to several local associations committed to providing an education for the children who live in the Mata Escura favela, one of the most notorious in Salvador de Bahia, where overcrowding, lack of services, poverty and violence put many children at permanent risk.

Another way Mario helps the children of the Mata Escura Favela is his remote adoption of five children through the Italian non-governmental organisation www.aiutareibambini.it, as part of a project to ensure that 50 children who live in the favela receive the attention, food and education they need.