Alex at Italia. Photo: Jazmin Stengel.

Patrick O’Heffernan and Jazmin Stengel.-  Alex Sgroi was seven years old  in Switzerland when Hitler invaded Poland and still remembers the sound of the German planes flying overhead; the war did not touch him directly, but he lost friends in the war and he lost contact with many people he knew. As a result, he still carries the need to help with him, which is why when Russia invaded Ukraine, he knew he had to do something.  

“I wanted not only to raise money to help the refugees, but to raise awareness of the suffering that the invasion was causing.  I saw the atrocities that are happening in Ukraine today as no different than the atrocities of WW2.  So I decided to raise money and awareness,” Alex told Semanario in an interview at his new  restaurant, Italia.

The plan was simple;  ask people to buy a takeout lasagna for $500 pesos and have them pick them up during a week set aside for the fund raising. Before starting, however, he consulted friends with relatives in Ukraine, and local nonprofits and his contacts from being in Rotary and Masons, and their advice helped.

“It was very successful.  We raised more than we planned and have already sent the money to the Canadian Red Cross.  I chose the Canadian Red Cross because the Canadian government was matching donations until they reached $130millinon CN.  Our donation was too late for the match, but it still helped,”, Alex said.

Having spent almost all of his adult life in the restaurant industry, including managing restaurants for major hotel chains in Europe, Alex knows exactly how to most efficiently produce the dinners.  He started a few weeks before the designated donation week and he and his staff cooked the lasagnas, packaged them for takeout, and froze them as part of their regular routine. They defrosted them during the donation week and were able to deliver delicious fresh lasagna to donors who arrive at his new location, Italia, in Ajijic.

“This is what I knew how to do,” Alex told Laguna as we gathered around one of the Formica tables in Italia, “Because of my age I could not volunteer to fight – I would be more of a problem than a solution, but this I could do,” He added that if there is a need for restaurant management or cooking, he would volunteer.

The people who bought the dinners were mostly  Canadians, he said, followed by Americans and a few Mexicans.   He said he has both Expats and Mexicans customers, but because they eat dinner at different times, they rarely are at the restaurant at the same time. But since the campaign was mostly for takeout, it did not matter. What was important was that they donated and they knew of the fight in Ukraine and the suffering of the refugees.