Heriberto Roccia (33) is wearing the Argentine National Team shirt. He wears it on ordinary days, but also on special occasions.
Recently, he was seen on stage at the Teatro Avenida receiving the award for Standard Bearer of the Year 2023 by Worthilythe venture he carries out with his wife Sol in Río Cuarto (Córdoba).
At the moment of receiving the prize, the photo shows that he moves forward and kneels in front of the crowdhe shakes his arms with clenched fists, closes his eyes as if to himself saying: we did it.
What the standard-bearers achieve (all dedicated to solidarity ventures throughout the country) is money to invest in your projects and, of course, more visibility.
While he talks, he is seen calm in a white-walled office in Río Cuarto; in light blue, the word “worthily” stamped on the wall that backs it. It is the office of Institutional management of the foundation that was created to support and educate parents and caregivers, and thus reduce child abuse.
He has just returned from a vacation in the mountains with Sol and his two children. “We take the month to set the goals for the year, so the holidays are a period of great creativity”. The entire team participates in this process (Worthily has 50 permanent employees and 90 temporary volunteers), the executive director, and Sol.
Heriberto met his wife in 2011 thanks to his father insisting that he go to a group of young of the Rural Society of Río Cuarto, and he gave him the pleasure.
The first day, he saw Sol and he liked him. “Hey, daddy, I loved the group, it’s great,” he remembers her saying to his father. Every Wednesday, Heriberto returned. “And well, later, when I met Sol“I already put on field pants and a beret,” he jokes now. That boisterous little boy with very good grades was beginning to find his place.
And here appears the figure of Dani, the man who cleaned the chapel, who later became a good friend. Dani was the bridge to discover his vocation for solidarity.
One day, when Heriberto passed by the school – before the university, from Sol y la Sociedad Rural –, Dani He asked for a hand to load some boxes into the truck. of the friar “I had to take them to the neighborhood of a Bolivian community,” he says.
They went and, as soon as he got down, many boys approached him saying “teacher.” They needed a soccer coach, a sport that Heriberto loves. Not knowing anyone there, he accepted the position. They came out champions. “And well, that’s where I start, I start going more often and I meet their realitywith their shortcomings, with the adverse situations that those children lived in.”
His story in the Las Quintas neighborhood did not end in soccer: Heriberto ended up coordinating a community center, where he learned how to work with families and how to make people want to participate in the projects. Many years later she took her to Sol, who was also interested in social matters, and working together they fell in love with her.
A movie gift
In 2017, Heriberto and Sol They got married in Sampacho, her town, one hour from Río Cuarto. “We asked the guests for their wedding gift to join the foundation we were going to create,” she says.
They already knew that Worthily It was the life project they wanted. A part of the wedding preparations It had to do with procedures to register credit cards and bank accounts so that members could start contributing.
The idea of the foundation had been brewing for a while. They were still university students, but they were already wondering about the two Argentinas they saw: the one full of entrepreneurs and the stagnant one. “A paralyzed Argentinawithout dreams, that we were able to know,” he explains.
“There are a lot of families who lack that spirit to get ahead, and there we do find an answer as to why the country is like this, right? Because there are a lot of people who, when they are boys, girls, little ones, suffer or live painful experiences and that makes it not so easy for them to imagine, project, create, work, undertake.”
They know that we don’t all start from the same place; that’s why Worthily aims to help level.
The foundation has maternity wards (for children under 3 years old) in Río Cuarto and in different locations in Santiago del Estero, whose differential is a space to assist caregivers.
Its infrastructure is also special, which tries to replicate international models of the highest quality such as Germany or Switzerland adapted to initial education classrooms in Argentina.
“The rooms have lots of lighting and contact with nature”, explains what these models provide. Added to this is the training of human capital.
Dignly Foundation makes different specialists available to caregivers who give them tools, from means to communicate to how to manage emotions.
The challenge is for adults to attend once a week, for two hours. That is the condition for your child to keep the place, which is limited and highly required.
There are two types of dynamics in these spaces: group or individual. “Starting from a topic, which most of the time arises from them and we schedule it during the year, we can talk about that topic with a game experience”says Heriberto.
Recently, while they were playing to guess the word that each one had written on a piece of paper and stuck to their forehead, the team of Worthily discovered a problem in a neighborhood: “At one point the word dad appeared, and the other people had to say what dad was: ‘The one who is erased’, ‘the one who abandons’, ‘the one who is never there’.”
The game devolved into a talk about roles and what happens when someone is not there. Other topics may be about take care of shapes or spaces if there is a fight between adults. The objective is to denaturalize situations.
Heriberto studied Business Administration and Public Accounting and that helps him have a systemic vision of his project: operations, human resources, administration, finances, communication. He also takes care of user experience and companies that contribute to the project. Starting at 800 pesos per month, anyone can donate.
“We have to be creative so that people can connect with the work and thus contribute, and from there help the transformation of Argentina,” he says.
In exchange, members receive, in addition to altruistic satisfaction, the opportunity to volunteer where they meet families.
It doesn’t always happen, but Worthily the da the opportunity to do it. Heriberto remembers the case of a manufacturer of acrylic pools who, when he returned from one of those trips, decided that if someone wanted to buy a pool from him, he first had to become a member of the foundation. Thus, the sand becomes a mountain.
Anyone can have a franchise: all you need to do is talk to Heriberto and Sol’s team and they will give you knowledge and experience. They don’t have to pay anything. The only condition is that each franchise must provide the means to survive and pay its employees.
Noon is approaching and Heriberto must continue. He lived the Standard Bearer award with great intensity. It was a recognition of the immense work and hours stolen from sleep What’s behind a project like this? It was also the possibility of showing that, in his own words, there are other types of interventions that can be made in the social world.
