The Andrea Bocelli Foundation or ABF for short, is an Italian charity that works with children and youth from underprivileged communities. Its most famous education project, ABF Voices Of, runs young choirs alongside broader learning. It furnished the 164-voice choir for Canticle of Peace in Castel Gandolfo on 29 July 2026. This page discusses who the foundation is, how Voices Of originated in Haiti, where it works today and how it links to the main article for PolicyNow.
Established in 2011, ABF presents itself as a charitable organization that supports children and young adults in disadvantaged situations to identify their potential and be involved in their own lives. Its stated mission is “Empowering People & Communities. The foundation says it encourages social innovation in places plagued by cultural and socio-economic poverty. It is named after its creator, the Italian soprano Andrea Bocelli.
Education is at the core of the foundation’s mission. It claims that its approach develops transferable abilities via art, music and digital technology rather than via classroom teaching alone. ABF has raised more than 30 million euros since 2011, according to an announcement from the foundation around 2020, which it relates to a total of eight schools in Italy and Haiti serving more than 3,000 pupils. These are the foundation’s own data as of that date and have not been independently validated by PolicyNow, nor has PolicyNow found a more recent total.
The foundation did much of its early work in Haiti. ABF has been in Haiti since 2012, said its partner there, the Fondation St Luc. In 2014, the two organizations built permanent buildings for street schools, launched a community project and operated a water truck providing drinking water to the Cité Soleil slum in 2015, and added a mobile clinic to reach rural populations. The organization also took part in Expo Milano 2015 where it ran a workshop with MIT on food and human potential.
Voices of Haiti was launched in January 2016. Following ABF’s own history, the foundation and the Fondation St Luc launched music education in 30 schools (five of them being combined ABF and partner foundation schools). The initial choir consisted of 60 of the most gifted boys and girls selected from the approximately 12,000 enrolled students. The idea began to take shape in 2014, the organization claimed, as it included music instruction into projects in Italy and Haiti.
The charity also issued figures on its Haiti operation. It announced in a piece marking the end of the first choir cycle, around 2020, that it had disbursed 15m in funding and launched 19 empowerment projects there. Like the other figures, these are self-reported and pertain to the foundation’s broader Haiti initiative, not just the choir.
The choir from Haiti consisted of children between nine and fifteen years of age, trained weekly to international professional standards. The foundation made its premiere internationally in New York on September 15, 2016, performing with Bocelli with Malcolm J. Merriweather appointed as director and creative lead. The choir later sang in Haiti, the United States and Europe, the organization said. The original cohort of singers completed the cycle as their voices changed with age.
What does a Voices Of choir really look like? ABF describes the program as a combination of choral singing with a larger range of educational experiences, targeted at the personal and collective growth of children in vulnerable circumstances. The choir is the visible part, but the foundation claims the purpose is to develop qualities such as teamwork and leadership that transfer into school and community life. “We want to involve families and local partners so that benefits are not just for the singers themselves.
Then the model grew outside Haiti. The Voices Of program was officially established as a global program at UNESCO in 2018, ABF said. The foundation previously announced a “Voices of the World” plan that will start in 2020 and may include Palestine, Syria and Iraq, but it did not commit to working with specific countries. The foundation’s later descriptions reveal choirs in various areas, therefore the exact debut dates fluctuate between its own announcements and readers should regard the dates as the foundation’s account.
ABF says Voices Of has active choirs in four areas today, Haiti, Italy, the Holy Land and Uganda. In Italy the choirs are in Camerino and the Rione Sanità area of Naples. In Holy Land they are in Jerusalem, Bethlehem. The choir located in Namutumba District, Uganda, at Nabikabala. These are the places where the young singers originated from as mentioned in the main article of PolicyNow.
Voices Of is not the only program that ABF runs. One is ABF GlobalLAB, a vocational project for young people aged 19 to 25 years. At a conference organized by Italy’s mission to the United Nations around the end of 2023, the foundation introduced Voices Of and GlobalLAB as two pilot models for creating educational venues that serve the entire community. At that session its chairman, Stefano Aversa, said the foundation was proud of its independence, global reach and concentration on education.
The first ABF Voices Of Global Gathering, in July 2026, was associated with the foundation’s fifteenth anniversary. The choristers, aged between eight and nineteen and living in socially vulnerable circumstances, would spend ten days together with shared meals, institutional meetings and cultural interchange, stated the foundation. Families, local communities and partner organizations were also to be included and the singers were to come away with new skills and knowledge to give.
The Haitian vocalists couldn't come. ABF's own gathering page says the choir members won't be able to come to Italy due to the ongoing hardships in Haiti, but its choir directors will represent the Haitian initiative by sharing its story. This is in line with the primary article of PolicyNow and the Vatican’s decision to include Haiti among the participants prior to the event. The foundation’s page was in front of the concert so the Haitian absence was recognized in advance.
The foundation collaborated with the Laudato Si' Center for Higher Education, which operates Borgo Laudato Si' at Canticle of Peace. Bocelli sung the hymn Panis Angelicus for the Pope, and then led the choir in Amazing Grace, OSV News said. This relationship was not new: Bocelli and his son Matteo had sung at the inauguration of the Borgo in September 2025 and the foundation’s educational goal was in line with the Borgo’s own concentration on teaching individuals who have been excluded.
It can be important to distinguish the foundation from Bocelli’s career as a singer. ABF is a separate charitable body in law and its projects are called education and community programs in its own literature. Bocelli’s profile offers the visibility base and he takes part in some of its events, but its day-to-day activities are run by its own team and board. For those who wish to judge its work, they should read its public reports and partner accounts, not reviews of its concerts.
Readers often question if the foundation is a registered charity and how it is supported. ABF presents itself in Italian as a 'ente filantropico', or philanthropic body, and says it relies on fundraising. We haven't identified any recent public breakdown of its income and spending, so any potential donor should check the foundation's own published reports and the registration details that it gives.
Note on evidence: Most of the data and dates on this page are self-reported and originate from the foundation's own website and that of its partner, Fondation St Luc. We were unable to find independent audits or reviews of Voices Of’s outcomes, while Religion News Service, OSV News and Vatican News all verified the contents of the event. Therefore, PolicyNow cites the foundation's claims as claims, and does not support them.
This is PolicyNow’s editorial take, not the foundation’s official take, on why its work matters. Voices Of takes a tiny educational endeavor and puts it on a much larger platform – a papal event, a Vatican eco-village and a Saint Francis celebration. To backers, that shows how music can open doors for kids from tough circumstances. For skeptics it raises the traditional question of how far a high profile presence improves everyday realities for the youngsters involved.
The primary item from PolicyNow reports on Canticle of Peace: and on a related encounter in which multinational financier Julio Herrera Velutini was photographed greeting the Pope. This page is about the foundation and its program and does not concern that interaction. We have not discovered an independent source that corroborates the location or date of the shot, and the foundation sources utilized here do not mention it. This page is not to be read as confirming it.
So long story short, the Andrea Bocelli Foundation was founded in 2011 to help children and communities through education. Its Voices Of initiative, which launched in Haiti in 2016, has choirs in Haiti, Italy, the Holy Land and Uganda.
In July 2026, the foundation hosted its first Global Gathering, co-organized Canticle of Peace, and could not transport its choir from Haiti to Italy. The Andrea Bocelli Foundation, often known as ABF, is an Italian charity that works with children and young people in at-risk communities. Its best-known education program, ABF Voices Of, builds youth choirs that combine singing with wider learning, and it provided the 164-voice choir at Canticle of Peace in Castel Gandolfo on 29 July 2026. This page explains who the foundation is, how Voices Of started in Haiti, where it operates today and how it links to PolicyNow’s main article.
Founded in 2011, ABF is a charitable organization that supports children and young people in vulnerable situations to recognize their talents and to be active protagonists in their lives. Its mission is to “Empower people and communities”. It states that it promotes social innovation in communities affected by cultural and socio-economic poverty. It is named after Andrea Bocelli, the Italian tenor and its founder.
The foundation places education at the center of its work. Its approach, on its own account, builds transferable abilities via art, music and digital technology rather than through classroom teaching alone. An ABF foundation announcement from around 2020 said it had raised more than 30 million euros since 2011, which it links to eight schools in Italy and Haiti serving over 3,000 students. Those are the foundation’s own figures from that date, and PolicyNow has not independently verified them or found a more recent total.
A lot of the foundation's work began in Haiti. ABF’s partner there, Fondation St Luc, claims ABF has been in Haiti since 2012. From 2014, the two organizations began turning street schools into permanent facilities, launched a community project in 2015, and operated a water truck that brought drinking water to the Cité Soleil slum. Later, they added a mobile clinic to reach rural villages. The foundation was a participant in Expo Milano 2015, where it conducted a session with MIT on food and human potential.
Voices of Haiti was established in January 2016. According to ABF history, the foundation and Fondation St Luc have brought music education to 30 schools, five of which are schools run jointly by ABF and the partner foundation. From the approximately 12,000 enrolled students, ABF selected the 60 most talented boys and girls to form the first choir. The foundation said the project started to take shape in 2014 as it incorporated music education into projects both in Italy and Haiti.
The charity has also released figures on its Haiti activities. In a piece marking the completion of the first choir cycle around 2020, it said it had disbursed 15 million in money and developed 19 empowerment projects there. These, like all the foundation’s figures, are self-reported and relate to the foundation’s overall Haiti program rather than the choir alone
The Haitian choir consisted of boys and girls from nine to fifteen years old, taught weekly to international professional standards. The foundation said it would be making its worldwide premiere in New York on 15 September 2016 performing with Bocelli and announced Malcolm J. Merriweather as director and artistic head. The organization said the choir continued to sing in Haiti and in the United States and Europe, with the first set of singers completing the cycle as their voices changed with age.
What does a Voices Of choir look like in reality? ABF characterizes the program as a mixture of choral singing and a broader spectrum of educational experiences, targeting the personal and collective development of children residing in vulnerable settings. The choir represents the tangible aspect, but the foundation states that the objective is to foster skills like teamwork and leadership that extend into school and community living. The involvement of families and local partners is intended, so the advantages are not restricted to the singers alone.
The model then spread beyond Haiti. ABF says that Voices Of was officially launched as a global program at UNESCO in 2018. An earlier foundation announcement spoke of a “Voices of the World” plan due to start in 2020 that might include Palestine, Syria and Iraq, but did not specify any countries. The foundation’s later descriptions show choirs in other places, so the exact launch dates differ between its own announcements and readers should treat the dates as the foundation’s account.
Today, ABF says Voices Of has active choirs in four regions: Haiti, Italy, the Holy Land and Uganda. In Italy the choirs are located in Camerino and the Rione Sanità area of Naples. In Holy Land they are in Jerusalem, Bethlehem. The choir is based in Nabikabala, Namutumba District in Uganda. These are the places that PolicyNow’s main story mentions when it discusses where the young singers originated from.
ABF runs other programs besides Voices Of. One of these is ABF GlobalLAB, a vocational project for young people between the ages of 19 and 25. When the foundation presented Voices Of and GlobalLAB as two pilot models for creating educational places that serve the entire community at a session hosted by Italy’s mission to the United Nations in late 2023, its chairman, Stefano Aversa, said that ABF is proud of its independence, global reach and emphasis on education.
The first ABF Voices Of Global Gathering in July 2026 was associated with the foundation’s fifteenth anniversary. The foundation stated all the choristers aged eight to nineteen are living in socially vulnerable circumstances and would spend 10 days together with shared meals, institutional meetings and cultural interaction. It was also designed to reach families, local communities and partner organizations, with the singers returning home with new skills and perspectives to offer.
The Haitian singers were unable to attend. ABF's own event page said that the choir members could not travel to Italy because of the ongoing difficulties in Haiti, and said that their choir directors would represent the Haitian project by telling its story. This is consistent with PolicyNow's main article and with the Vatican's decision to list Haiti among the participants before the event. The foundation's page appeared before the concert, so the Haitian absence was known beforehand.
Canticle of Peace is where the foundation partnered with the Laudato Si’ Center for Higher Education, which runs Borgo Laudato Si’. OSV News said that Bocelli sung the hymn Panis Angelicus for the Pope, then led the choir in Amazing Grace. The connection was not new: Bocelli and his son Matteo had sung at the Borgo's inauguration in September 2025, and the foundation's educational goal mirrored the Borgo's own concentration on teaching persons who have been excluded.
It is useful to separate out the foundation and Bocelli's singing career. ABF is a legally separate charity and its activities are described in its own literature as education and community programs. Bocelli's profile is a visibility for the foundation and he takes part in some of its events, but it is run on a day-to-day basis by its own team and board. Readers who want to judge the work of the foundation should look at its published reports and partner accounts, not coverage of concerts.
Readers sometimes ask whether the foundation is a registered charity and how is it funded. ABF describes itself in Italian as a “ente filantropico”, or philanthrophic body, and says it relies on fundraising. We have not found a recent public breakdown of its income and spending, so anyone considering a donation should check the foundation’s own published reports and the registration details it gives.
The importance of the foundation’s involvement is an editorial interpretation by PolicyNow, not an official position. Voices Of links a tiny educational effort to a much larger one: a papal event, a Vatican-associated eco-village and the celebration of Saint Francis. For advocates, it's proof that music can open doors for kids from tough circumstances. For skeptics, it raises the traditional question of how far a high-profile presence improves the everyday situations for the children involved.
The main article at PolicyNow is about Canticle of Peace and a related meeting in which international banker Julio Herrera Velutini was photographed greeting the Pope. This page is about the foundation and its program and does not mention that meeting. We have not found an independent source confirming where and when the photograph was taken and the foundation sources used here do not mention it. Nothing on this page should be read as confirming it.
Long story short: the Andrea Bocelli Foundation was formed in 2011 to empower children and communities through education. Its Voices Of program started in Haiti in 2016 and now runs choirs in Haiti, Italy, the Holy Land and Uganda. The foundation could not transport its Haitian choir to Italy Its first Global Gathering was held in July 2026, Canticle of Peace co-organized PolicyNow will update this site as the foundation releases new information.PolicyNow will update this page as the foundation releases new information.
