Social services help homeless man find long-lost sister

40-year-old from Cameroon was also aided by police, Caritas

By: ansa.it

Sep 28 2024
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Social services help homeless

A 40-year-old homeless man from Cameroon who is in poor health was helped by social services in the central Marche town of Jesi to find his long-lost sister, social workers have said.
    The man, called Sunrise to protect his real identity, lived on a bench of the Orti Pace area in Jesi.
    Social services, municipal police and Catholic charity Caritas tried to help him repeatedly without success until they were able to track down his sister, with whom he was not in contact anymore after losing his phone.
    "Sunrise didn't trust us, he did not want to be helped or so it seemed", said social worker Maria Pina Masella, who spoke about Sunrise's story this week.
    From the bench where he lived, "he started moving to other areas of Jesi and then Ancona, he was constantly fleeing", she said.
    "One day - explained Masella - we sat with him around a table and started really taking care of him.
    "We started researching his life, starting with the cities" where he had resided, as well as hospitals that had treated him for his health condition and the Caritas centres he had visited, she explained.
    "We discovered that he had a sister in Italy and that she couldn't contact him because he didn't have a phone anymore".
    Sunrise had in the meantime disappeared again but local police in Jesi discovered that he had been detained by police in Ancona so "we asked them to release him and that we would get in touch with his sister, who lives with her family in Valle d'Aosta", in northwestern Italy, the social worker said.
    The siblings spoke on the phone.
    The sister offered him her home and said she would take care of him if he joined her in Valle d'Aosta, recounted Masella.
    So Caritas in Jesi bought him a train ticket and an operator from Caritas in Ancona escorted him to the local police department who took him to the train because "we were afraid that he wouldn't be able to endure such a long trip", she said.
    "But the day after we celebrated - Sunrise had joined his sister in Valle d'Aosta, she immediately welcomed him" and she will "help him get treatment", the social worker concluded.