Giovanni Ermiglia

After his high-school diploma at the Liceo Classico Cassini[1] of Sanremo, Ermiglia graduated Jurisprudence at University of Genova and later philosophy, this time in Turin.[2] In Piedmont he used to hang out with local intellectuals and started dating with Lalla Romano, a well known poet who wrote for him several of her poems. These works have been later collected in Poesie per Giovanni, a book published in 2007 and also including some previous unpublished texts.[3] Back in Liguria Ermiglia left aside his forensic work and became philosophy teacher.[2] In the late 1960s he took part in the debate about the role of monasticism in the Western society which followed the publication of Thomas Merton's essay The contemplative and the atheist. Ermiglia, even if from an atheist point of view, supported the idea that monks were not compromised with the most questionable aspects of Catholic church temporal power.[4]

In 1969, during a trip in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, he met Shri J. Loganathan and other activists of Bhoodan, a movement founded during the 1950s by Vinoba Bhave and aiming to better distributing the land ownership through voluntary donations, thus helping poor paisants to live better. Vinoba walked across India for 14 years collecting 4,193,579 acres of land (around 1,700,000 hectares). Unfortunately much of this land was dry and/or abandoned from lots of years, and their new users were really poor and couldn't afford to start with new crops.

Ermiglia had the idea to collect money in Italy in order to help some peasant families to do so. The action obtained a good audience and were founded around Italy some groups af activists supporting the Indian Sarva Seva Farms (literally "farms at the service of everybody"), the local groups implementing Bhoodan at a grassroot level.[5] In its first years of activity Ermiglia was also supported by Movimento Sviluppo e Pace and SERMIG, two important NGOs of NW Italy respectively lead by Giorgio Ceragioli and Ernesto Olivero.[6]

Ermiglia's commitment for Sarva Seva Farms increased and he spent a lot of time in India up to 1990s; in 1995 the Italian groups of Bhoodan supporters were unified in ASSEFA Italia, a national N.G.O. which in 2002 was officially recognised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Aside of ASSEFA Ermiglia sometimes also represented in India Movimento Sviluppo e Pace.[7][8] In his late years a long illness slowed Ermiglia's activity, which was left to several friends and collaborators. The work of ASSEFA, which at first was limited to farming Tamil Nadu and South-India, slowly spread through the country and differenciated encompassing other activities such as education, microgranting[9] and improvement the situation of women. In 2015 the N.G.O. was providing services to around one million of households living in 10.000 villages.[10] Ermiglia died in 2004 in Sanremo, his hometown. In his will he left his belongings to the Livia Rubino e Giovanni Ermiglia foundation, established in order to continue his activity.[2]

• Premio Artigiano della pace (Artisan of Peace award, granted by the SERMIG) – 1984.[5]
• Deferder of Peace award – Madurai – 1986.[5]
• Cittadino Benemerito di Sanremo (Distinguished citizen of Sanremo, granted by the comune of Sanremo) – 1997.[2]
• UNICEF Italia plaque at Premio internazionale Genova per lo sviluppo dei popoli (International award for people's development) – 1988.[5]
• Peace Builders award (granted by the Indian Government) – 2001.[11]