Italian mayor saves his village by welcoming refugees

JONJO THE MISER · 11-01-2011 7:37pm #1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12138404

You can hear the children from the other side of the village square. Their excited voices bounce off the medieval stone walls and archways.
The sound comes from the newly restored Palazzo Pinnaro, a handsome building with views over the rooftops and the Ionian Sea.
Inside the classroom, boys and girls from Somalia, Albania, Iraq and elsewhere are reciting something from the blackboard. It is a poem about friendship. Some falter over the unfamiliar Italian, some are already fluent.
Domenico Lucano stands in the corner watching the class. "Kids are very quick. It only takes them five or six months to become proficient," he says.
"They make me proud and they give me hope that this place has a future. In 2000 our school was shut because we had so few pupils. Now it's flourishing."
Virtuous circle
Yet Mr Lucano, a stocky man with quick brown eyes and a firm handshake, has pulled off an extraordinary trick. He has managed simultaneously to create employment, stop a mass exodus from his village and to find a solution to the controversial issue of asylum seekers.
The local school was able to reopen, and stay open, because of the immigrants' children
Even more striking is that this experiment has worked in Calabria - one of Italy's poorest regions, which recently witnessed race riots. Dozens of demonstrators and police were injured last January in the nearby town of Rosarno after white youths fired air rifles at a group of Africans working as fruit pickers.
But immigrants are actively encouraged to come to Riace, where the mayor has created a special scheme for them.

Cavehill Red · 11-01-2011 7:41pm

Irena is one of 13 villagers in Riace receiving a salary of 700 euros (£582) a month from the integration programme.
Irena at work in the glass-blowing workshop Local woman Irena will now not need to leave Riace to find work
The Italian state provides around 20 euros per day for each refugee, to cover their accommodation, food, medical expenses, training and children's education.

Perhaps if this money had been provided directly to the village to create employment the original residents mightn't have left.