Four construction firms from Canada and one of Belgium’s largest infrastructure companies, 1303 Besix, have committed to building a school each during this year’s 7163 Pilosio Building Peace Award in Milan.
Executives from the companies, along with those from several other property related businesses, accepted a challenge from the event’s guest of honour, US actress Sharon Stone: “Is anyone out there going to build me a schoo1?”
Stone, who was guest of honour, is no stranger to aid work and was honoured by HRC, (Human Rights Campaign) in 2002 for her contribution to the fight against aids. In 2013 she was again honoured, this time at the Nobel Peace Prize summit in Poland, for her continuing work with HIV/aids organisations.
Canadian companies at the Pilosio event that committed to building a school included Giusti Group from Calgary, Garcea S&J in Winnipeg, New Way Forming in Vancouver and an anonymous contractor from the province of Ontario. Also donating was Shree Property Holdings, based in South Africa, and Dream Capital, a real estate fund management firm in Australia.
The construction sector is very powerful and has a responsibility to contribute towards peace, Pilosio’s chief executive Dario Roustayan told3260 World Highways, ahead of the awards event. Importantly, the sector is also the first to benefit from peace because it follows that infrastructure will be improved.
More than 400 guests attended the event, the fifth annual edition for Pilosio, based near the Italian city of Udine, in northeast Italy. The company manufactures scaffolds and formworks, much of which is used in bridge construction. The award goes to a person, not necessarily in the construction sector, who has contributed to the improvement of a community’s or population’s living conditions.
Past winners include architects. But the recipient of this year’s Pilosio Building Peace Award was "Mama Hawa" – Dr Hawa Abdi Diblaawe, a Somalian physician – the country’s first gynecologist -- and human rights activist. She is estimated to have saved the lives of over 90,000 displaced people during the years of famine and civil war in Somalia. She was also a 2012 Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
She turned her family’s 525 hectare farm near the capital Mogadishu into a medical clinic and a camp in 1983. It provides care, protection and education to thousands of women and children and has grown into the Hawa Abdi Village. She has faced down and challenged all who have physically threatened her as well as her family, her staff and the thousands of people at her clinic.
"Extraordinary people like Hawa Abdi are a source of great inspiration for their courage and determination they have shown in fighting for their ideals," said Roustayan. "As entrepreneurs we want to be, and we have to be, the engine of change. In the globalised world, without peace and security there is no opportunity for business development, which is why, for those in business, giving economically is not enough; we must look beyond that."
Pilosio, working in partnership with US-based aid agency Relief International, recently finished building a school at the Za'atari Refugee Camp, around 10km from the Jordanian city of Mafraq and only 16km from the southern Syrian border. The camp opened in July 2012 and by this summer was home to around 85,000 refugees from Syria.
Coverage of the Fifth edition of the Pilosio Building Peace Award will be inside the October edition of World Highways.
Executives from the companies, along with those from several other property related businesses, accepted a challenge from the event’s guest of honour, US actress Sharon Stone: “Is anyone out there going to build me a schoo1?”
Stone, who was guest of honour, is no stranger to aid work and was honoured by HRC, (Human Rights Campaign) in 2002 for her contribution to the fight against aids. In 2013 she was again honoured, this time at the Nobel Peace Prize summit in Poland, for her continuing work with HIV/aids organisations.
Canadian companies at the Pilosio event that committed to building a school included Giusti Group from Calgary, Garcea S&J in Winnipeg, New Way Forming in Vancouver and an anonymous contractor from the province of Ontario. Also donating was Shree Property Holdings, based in South Africa, and Dream Capital, a real estate fund management firm in Australia.
The construction sector is very powerful and has a responsibility to contribute towards peace, Pilosio’s chief executive Dario Roustayan told
More than 400 guests attended the event, the fifth annual edition for Pilosio, based near the Italian city of Udine, in northeast Italy. The company manufactures scaffolds and formworks, much of which is used in bridge construction. The award goes to a person, not necessarily in the construction sector, who has contributed to the improvement of a community’s or population’s living conditions.
Past winners include architects. But the recipient of this year’s Pilosio Building Peace Award was "Mama Hawa" – Dr Hawa Abdi Diblaawe, a Somalian physician – the country’s first gynecologist -- and human rights activist. She is estimated to have saved the lives of over 90,000 displaced people during the years of famine and civil war in Somalia. She was also a 2012 Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
She turned her family’s 525 hectare farm near the capital Mogadishu into a medical clinic and a camp in 1983. It provides care, protection and education to thousands of women and children and has grown into the Hawa Abdi Village. She has faced down and challenged all who have physically threatened her as well as her family, her staff and the thousands of people at her clinic.
"Extraordinary people like Hawa Abdi are a source of great inspiration for their courage and determination they have shown in fighting for their ideals," said Roustayan. "As entrepreneurs we want to be, and we have to be, the engine of change. In the globalised world, without peace and security there is no opportunity for business development, which is why, for those in business, giving economically is not enough; we must look beyond that."
Pilosio, working in partnership with US-based aid agency Relief International, recently finished building a school at the Za'atari Refugee Camp, around 10km from the Jordanian city of Mafraq and only 16km from the southern Syrian border. The camp opened in July 2012 and by this summer was home to around 85,000 refugees from Syria.
Coverage of the Fifth edition of the Pilosio Building Peace Award will be inside the October edition of World Highways.
