Please send money to help my friends. They are a family whose house has been destroyed by the earthquake in Norcia. The father rushed his family out into the darkness of the night while the building crumbled around them, and nobody was gravely hurt. However, the house is gone.

These are good people who first had little but now have nothing. They live near the mountains in the small town of Norcia; the father is a local policeman and the mother a cook. The children are young and go to school. They have a few goats and sheep they keep for milk and cheese.

Their rare hospitality and kindness is the reason I know them. They took me in when I was traveling alone in their country a few years ago, offering me food and shelter without asking anything in return. Here is an opportunity to return their generosity - to show them that no act of kindness is in vain.

Times were already tough before this tragedy, but they need help now more than ever. They have no home. They fled to a neighbor’s apartment, in cramped quarters, at a loss for how to rebuild their future. That house was their retirement; the children’s inheritance; their past, present and future.

Obviously, there are many there who are in worse conditions - still trapped under the rubble or mourning over dead loved ones. The government will try to help these people first. But the Italian government is not reliable and another city hit by an earthquake in 2009 - l'Aquila - is still very much in ruins and many people are still living in shipping containers there, seven years later.

It's impossible to help everyone, but we must help the ones we love. Please help them by sending a little bit of money – all I ask is enough to cover their immediate costs and to let them live with dignity. They no longer have a home to protect them, so let us.