Operations
Matera, the city in the Italian south made up of ancient cave dwellings that had been continuously inhabited from the Paleolithic period until the 1950s, when the last of the city’s inhabitants were evacuated. When Kihlgren arrived Matera was still largely desolate; but by 2019 the city had been voted European Capital of Culture, though Kihlgren is reticent to accept responsibility for the city’s change in fortune. Both of Sextantio’s Italian projects were concerned with preserving what Kihlgren calls “minor historical heritage” – not the grand Roman or Renaissance architectures upon which European conservation tends to focus, but the vernacular architectures of everyday people. His latest venture, the Capanne Project, is set to open at the end of March 2022 and expands this mission in a very different context: Nkombo Island in Lake Kivu, Rwanda. Like in Santo Stefano and Matera, the project was informed by history and anthropology, as Kihlgren was inspired by seeing traditional huts in the Ethnographic Museum of Rwanda. But rather than preserving an existing architecture, the Capanne Project is about rebuilding traditional vernacular architectures from scratch. The Capanne Project consists of two 8x8m huts,
each sparsely furnished with traditional Rwandan beds of layered straw mats and mattresses. Like the earlier projects, the huts strive to remain true to traditional form – while cleverly incorporating enough amenities to make the stay comfortable (bathrooms with showers, WCs, bidets and hot water; and Wi-Fi access, a safe, a kettle, a hairdryer and daily housekeeping services). But it is the economic model that is distinctive about this project. “It is completely non- profit,” Kihlgren explains. Online, the nightly rate for the huts is listed as a “free donation to Sextantio Onlus”. “You could pay anything from $1 to $1m,” Kihlgren confirms. “I don’t even want to know. At the end of the year, we must have enough money to pay the caretaker and the cook – and any profits will go to the Mutuelle de Santé.” Thanks to a community-based health insurance scheme run by the Rwandan government, Kihlgren has been working alongside the Mutuelle de Santé since he first came to Rwanda in the 1990s. “When I was young I was very lucky and I made some money,” Kihlgren says, “and I wanted to give it to somebody who needed it.” He travelled to Africa, with a priest from his former school, and helped build a maternity hospital on the Congo-Rwanda border. Yet after spending long stretches in Rwanda Kihlgren became increasingly troubled by the country’s high mortality rates from curable diseases. As a result, in 2008, he and other Sextantio members established an NGO that operates in conjunction with the Mutuelle de Santé to provide health insurance to those most in need. After settling overheads and staff costs, every penny that the
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
Left: Accor’s HQ at Tour Sequana in Paris shows its support for employees during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Opposite: Santo Stefano di Sessanio, an abandoned village- turned-restored tourist destination.
Capanne Project makes will go into providing welfare for the local community.
Hospitality turns humanitarian Sextantio is not the only group reimagining hotels as vehicles for philanthropy. In recent years, the hospitality sector has been redefining its role in an unequal world and thinking bigger than business, tourism and luxury. In 2020, Accor, one of the world’s leading hotel groups in hospitality, established the ALL Heartist Fund. As Accor’s chief sustainability officer Bruce Poirson explains, the ALL Heartist Fund is, “a Covid-19 special purpose fund”. The fund “aims to support all of the group’s employees, through helping to pay hospital fees related to Covid-19 – for those who do not benefit from either a social security system or medical insurance – [and] providing help to employees suffering from severe financial hardship”, he says. 2020 was an unprecedented year, and the pandemic
triggered an urgent need for the redirection of Accor’s funds – but the group’s charitable initiatives predate the pandemic. “Solidarity and caring is part of our group’s DNA,” Poirson explains. “Accor Solidarity (the Accor Heartist Solidarity endowment fund) was set up in 2008 to promote access to professionalisation, employment or entrepreneurship, by supporting projects with positive implications for vulnerable people in countries where Accor operates.” What the coronavirus crisis did, in Poirson’s eyes, was “highlight and reinforce the importance of our strongest asset – our people. As a leading hospitality group, we believe that the notion of hospitality is inseparable from the notion of responsibility: not only welcoming people but also taking care of people and the communities around us.” The ALL Heartist Fund has had a ripple effect that
even Accor couldn’t have foreseen. “Following this global initiative, a great number of local solidarity projects have emerged around the world providing donations and accommodation for on-the-field medical
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