From Kirey Group's Turin office to Tanzania, always as a Project Manager. This is the brief synopsis of the last year for Roberta Girardi, who has been with Kirey Group since 2018 and recently returned to the company after an eleven-month volunteer experience supporting the Empowerment project, dedicated to the emancipation of Tanzanian domestic workers. "I was involved in the project alongside my husband, who works for the Intercultural Center of the City of Turin, one of the promoters and the NGO Comunità Volontari per il Mondo. I left with him as a volunteer, thanks also to the openness I found within the company when I requested a one-year leave to dedicate myself to this mission," explains Roberta. "Both the HR team and, in particular, Alessandra Girardo, General Manager Italy, immediately showed great sensitivity to this initiative."
The Empowerment Project
In Tanzania, many girls, starting as young as 9 or 10, are sent to work as domestic helpers in families other than their own, especially in large cities. In practice, this is a new form of slavery: these girls grow up taking on the heaviest household chores, with no days off and often without a salary. Some of them do not have a proper place to sleep and are victims of abuse. An economic-cultural environment exacerbated by widespread poverty makes this dramatic situation possible.
The Empowerment project set out with the primary goal of identifying as many girls as possible, educating them on basic rights, negotiating with their employers for better living conditions, and connecting them to create a support network.
Rising to a new challenge
In questo contesto, Roberta è riuscita a mettere in gioco le sue skills professionali in un ambiente del tutto nuovo: "Ho scoperto che nelle missioni di volontariato non sono richieste solo professionalità come medici o ingegneri - racconta - c'è tanto bisogno anche di persone che coordinino le risorse e le varie fasi di progetto. Il mio background nel project management, in particolare sul metodo Agile, si è rivelato prezioso anche in Tanzania, pur di fronte a problemi del tutto nuovi per me: dal trovare un modo di lavorare senza corrente, alla contrattazione con i fornitori locali per l'organizzazione di un evento. Ho sbloccato un nuovo livello di problem solving!"
In this context, Roberta applied her professional skills in an entirely new environment: "I discovered that in volunteer missions, it's not just doctors or engineers who are needed—there's also a great need for people who can coordinate resources and the various project phases. My background in project management, particularly in the Agile method, proved valuable even in Tanzania, despite encountering entirely new challenges, such as finding ways to work without electricity or negotiating with local suppliers for event organization. I unlocked a new level of problem-solving!"
All this in service of Empowerment, which since October 2023 has managed to gather 8,000 profiles of domestic workers in a database: "The concept of a database, so familiar to us, represents a crucial starting point in contexts like this. For these girls, being registered means being visible for the first time to those who can help them; for us volunteers, the information collected in that database enabled a detailed analysis of the situation, providing a foundation to work from," explains Roberta. "For instance, we found that the average age of these girls is between 13 and 14 and that they have little to no formal education. We also mapped the main routes of their migration, from their home villages to metropolitan areas." After the census, the project moved on to subsequent phases of outreach, negotiating with families, and training the girls themselves to teach them basic knowledge of their rights, as well as enhancing their professional skills as domestic workers and facilitating access to microloans for further education. We tried to give new dignity to this profession, further solidified by the national recognition of a new domestic work curriculum in April 2024, also thanks to this project.
Returning to Daily Life
Roberta returned to Italy with a wealth of experience and hope: "I brought home so much, both personally and professionally. I am grateful to Kirey Group for recognizing from the start how valuable this experience would be for my growth. On a personal level, it was wonderful to discover that humanity truly is one: in Tanzania, my husband and I received extraordinary hospitality, despite the language barrier, as most of the population does not speak English. This year of volunteering was a great gift, and I hope to continue nurturing the network of contacts created over these months so that more important initiatives can be launched, aimed at the most vulnerable populations," concludes Roberta.
We are happy to welcome Roberta back to Kirey Group after such a meaningful experience, which proves the many ways one can continue to grow, and reminds us how far we still have to go toward an equitable society, where women's work is recognized and fairly compensated, without geographic boundaries.
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