Dear Edgeryders,
unfortunately I can not be in Brussels and I’m so sorry.
and so, first of all, I wish you good work, good days, good inspirations and “contaminations”
I’m writing this mission because this is the project that if I were there, I would talk about.
In fact this is a story of local heroes who are working together in my beloved Sicily in a suburb of Catania called Librino which has about 70,000 inhabitants and that is the centre of crime, organized or not: drug dealing, illegal arms trafficking, receiving stolen.
It is like a world apart from the rest of the city and it is also socially disintegrated inside.
For several years there are volunteers who work to improve the situation and to fight against the social exclusion, above all with the children: Iqbal Masih Center, an autonomous space for social gathering born in 1995, and a sport association called I Briganti Rugby di Librino ( the Bandits of Rugby of Librino) born in 2006 are working in this area poor of services and social spaces.
Iqbal Masih Center organizes after school care for children and artistic workshops with teenagers and adults and it is become a point of observation and intervention on the dynamics of youth problems and child labor. The Center Iqbal Masih want to create opportunities for cultural enrichment and give the possibility of relationships beyond the boundaries of the district.
The goal is that the inhabitants of Librino, young and old, can become aware of their individual potential, of their rights, of the possibilities for collective growth of the community also through the strengthening of the spirit of solidarity among its members.
To reach these goals in 2006 inside the Iqbal Masih Center born also a sport association called I Briganti Rugby that want to promote sport practice for groups of children (also on the recommendation of social services and also with provisions of the Juvenile Court).
In this way I Briganti Rugby, together with the Iqbal Masih Centre, work to improve the relationship between inhabitants and the territory, to offer alternative opportunities, promoting the sport principles ( cooperation, respect of the rules etc.) to achieve aggregation paths.
In 5 years I Briganti Rugby involved 300 children ( under 8, 10, 12, 14, 16) who now play in the C series.
In Librino there is a sports complex called San Teodoro built trough an investment of 10 million euro for a sporting championship of the Italian universities in 2003. It was used few months, then it was abandoned and vandalized.
Iqbal Masih Centre and I Briganti Rugby asked for several years to the local authorities the possibility to recover and to manage the sports complex. They also raised 7000 signatures in a petition and a letter sended by the President of the Italian Rugby Federation who support the cause, but their requests have been ignored by the local authorities.
And so the April 25th, 2012 the volunteers of Iqbal Masih, I Briganti Rugby, a city committee made up of many families and the occupants of the Coppola Theatre decided to occupy the sports complex now called San Teodoro Liberato ( Free Saint Teodoro) “because we believe that is a civic duty doing something to go beyond people who might manage the public heritage, our heritage, of our city, but let it to a complete degradation”.
As you may see in the videos (i’m sorry, but they are only in italian ) and photos below all the people are working together to refurbish the spaces and to build day by day the possibility of a better life trough sport and art. The volunteers are searching a dialogue with local authorities, but (except in the period of the political election) it is like they are invisible .
