Grana Padano Consortium and Rava Foundation

It all began in 2004, when the Grana Padano Protection Consortium met with the Francesca Rava Foundation N.P.H. Italia onlus and found that they had one thing in common, namely, the achievement of a milestone: 50 years of activity.
 
In fact, in 1954, the Consortium for the Protection of Grana Padano cheese was established, with the aim of protecting, enhancing and promoting a cheese with a millenary history, which was first created by Cistercian monks so they could make their milk last as long as possible, avoiding waste and alleviating famine.
That same year, Father William Wasson, who was a young parish priest in Cuernavaca, Mexico, was given custody of a young boy - who had stolen alms from his church - and of eight other homeless children. This is how Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (N.P.H) was born, which in Italy relies on the tireless work of the Francesca Rava Foundation.
 
Therefore, the Consortium and the Foundation are the result of a shared history of solidarity and concrete commitment to eradicate hunger and poverty. This is why, after getting together, they immediately set to work and organised a major fund raising campaign for the construction of the paediatric hospital N.P.H. Saint Damien in Haiti, a country where infant mortality is among the highest in the world. Specifically, the Consortium has always been concerned with nutritional issues and nutritional education and is committed to setting up the Grana Padano Nutrition Centre: a ward for treating malnutrition and related diseases, thereby offering children a real chance of life in a country where one in three children do not reach the age of five, in most cases due to undernourishment.
 
A true friendship was established with the Foundation, the result of mutual esteem and shared values, which, over the years, saw the Consortium participating in various solidarity initiatives.
In 2010, Haiti was struck by a catastrophic earthquake, causing 230,000 deaths and 300,000 wounded. The Consortium continued to support the Foundation, providing substantial assistance during the initial rescue and post-emergency phases.
 
During EXPO 2015, at Cascina Triulza – the civil society pavilion – the Consortium set up a real dairy, which produced two wheels of Grana Padano cheese a day. All the cheese wheels produced at EXPO with the official serial number MI2015 were sold and the proceeds were donated to the N.P.H. Saint Damien hospital in Haiti. This is further proof of the fact that the 200 dairies that produce the most widely consumed Italian PDO cheese in the world have a long-standing tradition of active support and solidarity.