| Abstract: | This paper documents the experience of a one-time famous, longstanding, charismatically led and transnationally funded welfare project in Naples, Italy. It details the manner of the project's original funding success and reviews the implications of its subsequent shift from child rescue to community development, in conjunction with its founder's decision to resign from the priesthood. It comments on the project's funding fortunes thereafter, up until its founder's retirement, and argues that, whilst the activities of the project advanced from what might be termed first-generation (humanitarian relief) to second-generation (community development), its styles of management and fundraising remained essentially unchanged. The paper comments on the project's qualities of charismatic leadership in conjunction with "friendship style" fundraising, and suggests ways in which its life might have been prolonged with less upheaval, beyond the first generation. This account could furnish useful learning material for other, later North–South NGO projects. |
