Duranti Cristina

Cristina Duranti has been working in the non-profit sector for almost twenty years alongside international religious congregations, with a career that combines academic study, practical experience and a personal commitment that originated within her own family. She holds a PhD from the University of Florence and is currently completing a Master’s degree in Philanthropic Studies at the University of Kent, where her research focuses on how international religious congregations are currently rethinking the way they support their missions in the world’s poorest countries.

As Director of the Good Shepherd International Foundation (GSIF), she supports the mission of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd around the world: a presence that today comprises 164 active projects in 34 countries across Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. But behind every figure lies a simpler, truer story: that of religious communities which, for decades – and in some cases for over a century – have stood by those living on the margins – girls who are victims of trafficking, exploited children, families ravaged by poverty – and which now find themselves having to reimagine how to sustain this presence, at a time when vocations are shifting from the Global North to the Global South and the models of the past are no longer sufficient.

This is where the GSIF’s role comes in: not merely to promote projects, but to help congregations build their own capacities — in governance, project planning and building relationships with potential supporters — so that their mission does not depend on external aid, but finds the resources within itself to continue. This work involves accompaniment and training, time spent together, and testimonies of life and mission.

This experience on the ground has also led her to take part, at the OECD and the World Economic Forum, in discussions on the relationship between business and human rights — not as an abstract theory, but based on what she saw with her own eyes in Kolwezi, in the cobalt mining district of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where GSIF has rescued over 4,000 children from working in artisanal mines. It was an experience that taught her how the great issues of our time — care for creation, the dignity of work, and justice amongst peoples — are played out in concrete terms in the life of a child rescued from a mine.

Alongside this commitment, Cristina is the founder and president of FATE – Families with Oesophageal Atresia, an association born out of first-hand experience with a rare congenital condition that affected her family, and which over time has become a point of reference and a link to the leading European paediatric research centres.