Transformations

When we opened the women's reception 25 years ago, the need we tried to respond to was that of women who could not find a place in public dormitories. They mainly came from Eastern European countries looking for work to support their family back home in the grip of an increasingly higher cost of living. The arrival was the most difficult period, they had no money to support themselves, they slept outdoors or at risk of exploitation in makeshift accommodation.

We opened night reception for them: clean and dignified rooms, a shower, a hot meal, a bed for the night in a safe place. Our dormitory has been a refuge and at the same time a springboard for thousands of women. Almost all of them found work as carers within a few months. In the early 2000s the scenario changed, alongside women from the East, women from African countries arrived. Refugees who had no suitcase with them but only the scars of an inhumane migratory journey. Our nocturnal reception could no longer be the adequate response to their needs and so we allocated some rooms to residential reception where the most fragile women could also stay during the day. The original dormitory has thus given way to a residential reception open 365 days a year. Over the years we have become a point of reference for many local services that needed emergency accommodation for women in fragile situations: sick, victims of exploitation, abused alone or with children.

We have changed and grown with the people we have welcomed. We listened to reality, allowing ourselves to be questioned by the doorbell which promptly upset our plans, forcing us, with love, to question ourselves, to understand each time what to do for those in front of us.

To support the people we host we have built external and internal networks that allow us to offer not only a place to stay but a path to find oneself and think about oneself again in a present and a future. In this sense, the entire fraternity, our medical clinic, the Italian school, the after-school program have allowed us to offer an all-round welcome where at the center there is not a body to which to give food and a bed but a person who, first of all, it needs to be recognized as such.

Simona Pagani

NP Agosto-Settembre 2023