Immacolata e Luciana

Two stories intersect among the people awarded the Honor of Merit of the Italian Republic by President Mattarella last March. They are the stories of two women who help other women, two entrepreneurs who try to create jobs to help prisoners reintegrate and redeem themselves. I am Immacolata Carpinello, founder of the social cooperative "Lazzarelle" in Pozzuoli, and Luciana Delle Donne, with her non-profit organization "Made in prison".

She tells Immacolata: «We have job placement paths through a product that is also the emblem of our city, coffee. Everything is the result of collective work, of many collaborators, of the prison authorities and above all of the "lazzarelle", a living part of our community. We always want to think in terms of opportunities and through work we build paths, which every woman is free to follow or not, even at the end of her sentence."

On the other hand, Luciana's project is based on the collection of fabrics or waste material, which can become raw material for new products: «It is a project that has given life to a model of regenerative, reparative and circular economy, where everything it is reused and recycled, putting the planet at the centre. Through these objects we are able to pay salaries to people who are detained in prisons. But it is not just a work of sartorial and manual production: we like to change people's lifestyle a little, rebuild their dignity, their self-esteem, their awareness, be able to transfer the sense of hard work."

The words intersect and complement each other: the bil, i.e. "Gross Internal Wellbeing", as Luciana defines it, materializes in the need to grow these good initiatives, in which every profit is reinvested. Their stories speak to each other, even if their commitments are born and materialize in different territories. But those who walk in the same direction sometimes meet, perhaps without knowing each other, but we recognize each other as part of the same story, of the same humanity.
That humanity that believes that it is always possible to give a second chance.

Roberto Lerda
NP June / July 2023