Rome, Trevi Fountain coins will be used for social maintenance projects. But they will be taken away from Caritas

As of next April 1, the entity in charge of managing the coins that tourists throw into the basin of the Trevi F ountain and other fountains in Rome every day as a superstitious sign to wish their return to the city will change: In a council memorandum approved on Dec. 28, Mayor Virgina Raggi has in fact decreed that the monies obtained from the fountains (and amounting to about 1.5 million euros a year) will no longer be entrusted to Caritas, which had been managing them since 2001, but to Acea, the multiservice company active in the water, energy and environmental sectors. Acea will be in charge of bagging, withdrawing, cleaning, counting and depositing the pennies: except for withdrawing and bagging, these are all operations that until now were carried out free of charge by Caritas volunteers and will now instead be the task of professional staff.

The funds thus obtained, net of what is needed to finance the extension of Acea’s service contract (since the company already takes care of some activities on the fountains), will be used mainly for social projects and cultural heritage maintenance (although a part, as mentioned above, will have to be used to pay Acea employees who will do what Caritas volunteers used to do for free). For Caritas, the termination of the concession amounts to a cut of 1.5 million euros on the part of the budget that used to be earmarked for projects for the poor (and corresponding, Avvenire reports, to about 15 percent of the total budget of Caritas Rome).

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Rome, Trevi Fountain coins will be used for social maintenance projects. But they will be taken away from Caritas

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