The song is captivating, with professional music and arrangements. The voices are those of the teenage patients of the pediatric unit of Milan’s Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori who worked for several months to record a video just released on YouTube.
The song it’s titled “You are the summer. The reverse rain dance”, and is part of “Progetto Giovani” (“Youth project”), a project launched in 2011 with the support of the voluntary association Bianca Garavaglia to help young cancer patients – adolescents and young adults – cope with their long hospital stays, especially at challenging times like summer or Christmas holidays.
The project, directed by oncologist Andrea Ferrari has the aim of offering adolescents and young adults affected by pediatric cancers psychosocial support and long-term follow-up focused on the specific challenges they have to face, starting with concerns about their look and future fertility.
In the three rooms re-fitted for use by the project, adolescents – both hospitalised and treated in day-hospital – can benefit from a continuous multidisciplinary support, that welcomes their young friends and partners willing to take part in the common activities.
The new video involved 45 patients and former patients of the pediatric oncology ward, aged 14 to 25, who worked for six months under the supervision of Stefano Signoroni, one of the institute’s researchers who is also a musician, and professional bass-player Faso, with the famous Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese. Some of the patients’ voices and dance performances were recorded while they were in isolation because of a bone marrow transplant, and added in post-production.
This is the second project for a song and video: the previous one, for Christmas 2016, was jokingly named “Palle di Natale” (“Christmas balls”, with a pun in Italian referring to the annoyance of spending the holidays in the hospital) and collected over 11 million views on Youtube.
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