Aldo Magazzeni, founder of Traveling Mercies international relief organization, will be at Frederick on Wednesday, November 28 at 2:00 PM.
Aldo’s pictures are currently on disdplay throughtout the halls of Frederick. The public is welcome to come and experience his travels through these wonderful pictures.
Traveling Mercies’ purpose is dedicated to helping others, while creating a vehicle to remove barriers between cultures so that individuals can share their strengths, assets, and blessings with each other. Aldo has photographed images and written stories of the places, the people and the work he has experienced during his travels. He currently has projects in Afghanistan, Kenya, Haiti, and Mexico.
Aldo was born in Abruzzo, Italy in 1949 and lived in a rural mountain village, poor and damaged by the effects of World War II. At the age of 5 years old, he immigrated to Philadelphia, PA with his parents. Aldo graduated from Bishop Neumann High School and was matriculated into Penn State University where he received a B. S. in Business and Humanities.
Combining a penchant for mountain climbing with a love of community service, Aldo began performing volunteer service in the US and abroad. Since 1998, Aldo has traveled to, and worked, with communities in Italy, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, South America, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Kenya, Ethiopia and others. His affiliation with volunteer groups include local churches, The Salvation Army, The Women of Hope, and The Nyumbani Children’s Home, to name a few.
In 2002, Aldo led a local community group to successfully complete the first self-help project in Pennsylvania, which delivered water and sewer to over fifty homes and businesses at a very low cost in South Coventry. Aldo’s next projects focused abroad where he helped start and support day care centers and shelters for children and adults in Afghanistan. He has worked to improve hospital conditions in various foreign countries, started training centers in Afghanistan’s women’s prison and personally organized the building of twelve water systems in Afghanistan villages, which provide fresh water to over 75,000 people. Aldo has also traveled and volunteered in Louisiana and Mississippi shortly after Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, Aldo went to Kenya where he assisted with building a self-sustaining village for HIV orphans and installed a water system for that village.
Aldo created Traveling Mercies in October of 2007, a non-profit 501(c) (3) foundation. In 2009, in partnership with the Jesuits and the International Rotary, Traveling Mercies provided a well to a school in need in Nairobi, Kenya. Traveling Mercies has also been assisting Tashirat Orphanage in Mexico with various projects, and support for the children’s lunch program.
Traveling Mercies’ purpose is dedicated to helping others, while creating a vehicle to remove barriers between cultures so that individuals can share their strengths, assets and blessings with each other.