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Rita Sciarra Was Chosen as Yale World Fellow. Then She'll Go Back to Her UN Job in Haiti

, by Davide Ripamonti, translated by Alex Foti
Her dream as a young girl was directing the hospital of the small town in Calabria where she was born, Altomonte. Today she has translated her dream into a job at the United Nations, on whose behalf she heads the poverty reduction unit in Haiti, the Caribbean country still struggling to recover from the terrible earthquake it suffered in 2010


Rita Sciarra, 36, who graduated from Bocconi CLAPI in 2004, has made a long career since graduating from the university. "This occurred thanks to Bocconi and the Ulysses Prize, which enabled me to start traveling", which she did by working in some of the most disadvantaged countries of the world. After India, Tanzania, Bolivia and Santo Domingo, she has been selectedfor her work in Haiti as a World Fellow by Yale University in a program involving 16 selected researchers from every region of the world who are engaged in professional activities helping others.

"We are all mid-career people," says Rita, "with important things behind us, but with so many goals still ahead of us. It's a program that has existed for 15 years and this is the first time an Italian woman becomes a Yale World Fellow."

The program takes place from July to December and consists of various activities: "We will have to hold classes in which we'll have to share our experiences," Rita continues, "then the university will prepare an ad hoc program for us to apply our specific knowledge; finally, we will be asked to mentor students interested in working in the area of international aid and cooperation."

At the end of her stay at Yale, Rita will return to Haiti, where her work is very important: "What I first did when I got there was to work on a project whose goal was to clean up the building rubble and recycle it, then I was entrusted with managing a series of projects dealing with the reconstruction and recovery of destroyed neighborhoods, before getting the job I'm currently doing. I must say that my life has been a continuous process of submitting applications."

For the next 10-15 years, Rita still imagines her future with the United Nations, "where I can contribute to give opportunities to those who've been deprived of them, but my secret dream is to return to Italy, where there is a lot of work to do, maybe in the Calabria region where I'm from. What I want to say to young people is that they have to believe in their own dreams and pursue them even if at first they run into hurdles and setbacks. I really wanted to work in this field and I did it. Maybe one day I will direct that hospital, as I dreamt at the beginning of my lifetime journey. "

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