Il Melograno (The Pomegranade) is an international network created with the purpose to allow families and young people all over the world to exchange experiences and share actions and ideas to fight the emergency of abandoned children.

It is formed by associations and informal adoptive and foster families’ groups, as well as by care leavers, who - based on their personal experience of growing up in an institute- are actively involved in favour of abandoned children.

The network was born in August 2006 at the International Meeting of those groups during a Conference organised by Amici dei Bambini in Bellaria (Italy). It comes after a long period of reflection about the nature of the elements that hinder the union of families willing to welcome a child and children without a family.

The mission of Il Melograno is to promote parental affection as the only effective solution for the problem of children abandonment as well as to find significant and innovative strategies in favour of abandoned children worldwide.

Therefore, the network has become an instrument to make public opinion aware about the problem of out-of-family children, to exchange testimonies and best practices, to examine abandoned childhood situation worldwide, to sustain adoptive and fostering families - as well as young care leavers - in their life, to promote innovative social policies with the aim to demonstrate that civil society has a fundamental role in the development of children programmes, both as user as well as resource.  

Il Melograno is an international movement which counts at the moment about thirty groups in 15 different countries all over the world, from Asia to Africa, from Latin America to Europe.