Published Monday, October 12, 2009
By Chris Bishop

The Eastampton businessman spends his life serving others.

Aldo Magazzeni, with his long hair and beard, has been told he looks like an Old Testament prophet.

Magazzeni, a partner in a Burlington County business, downplays the resemblance. His company, Champion Fasteners in Eastampton, makes industrial fasteners.

Magazzeni's life, however, isn't about making a profit, as he explains it.

It's about serving others.

Magazzeni, a resident of Perkiomenville, Pa., is the founder and director of Traveling Mercies, a nonprofit foundation. According to Magazzeni, the purpose of the group is to help others, especially in nations that have been devastated by natural or man-made disasters.

The native of Abruzzo, Italy, is about to practice what he preaches later this week. He leaves for Kenya on Friday to help with a water project and irrigation system.

"I am not there for profit or ego or religious reasons," Magazzeni said. "I feel drawn, as we as human beings are drawn, to connect to each other."

That humanitarian impulse is what has repeatedly drawn Magazzeni to exotic - and sometimes dangerous - places.

After leaving Kenya, the businessman-turned-philanthropist will travel to war-ravaged Afghanistan.

There, he will resume his work in building water systems in the country's remote northern villages.

He will organize village volunteers to make pumping systems so they can have clean, fresh water without having to journey for miles for it.

The dangers in a country that has been torn by warfare for decades don't frighten Magazzeni, who said he felt safe there.

"It's an amazing culture because there's so much of the old world there still available," he said. "It's wild in a way that nature is. It's beautiful + the mountains + the people are very interesting and respectful."

His seventh visit to a land where 68,000 American troops are stationed also will include working on the women's rights issue.

"That will be a good step to people meeting and getting to know each other," he said.

Magazzeni, 59, who has worked as a juvenile probation officer in Philadelphia, has been what he called a "serial entrepreneur," launching a number of ventures in the 1980s.

In 1990 he joined with Robert Santare and Stan Lippincott to start Champion Fasteners.

Magazzeni said he decided to do more for others after a 2003 mountain-climbing expedition in India.

From there, he made his first trip to Afghanistan in 2004, where he undertook a water project.

"I felt we should do something for other people," said Magazzeni, who lives with his wife, Anna, on a farm in Montgomery County, Pa. "We didn't help build up Afghanistan. The way to make this a stronger and better country is to build them up."

Soon the work will continue. Magazzeni plans to spend a "number of weeks" working with the Afghans until more villagers have clean water.

He has also helped others closer to home. After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Magazzeni negotiated a contribution of more than $15,000 in computers from the Burlington County Institute of Technology in Westampton for the Gulfport Vocational School in Mississippi.

Despite the harshness of life in Afghanistan, his latest mission reminds Magazzeni of an important lesson.

"This is a reminder of the blessings we have in the United States," he said.

For more information about Traveling Mercies, visit www.travelingmercies.org.

Contact Chris Bishop at (609) 871-8140 or cbishop@phillyBurbs.com

This article can be found online here.