Solidarity baskets

For almost a year now, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the courtyard of the Arsenale della Pace has come alive with people of all ages and nationalities. From a distance, without crowds, the families of the neighborhood come to collect the shopping bag every month. At the moment there are 837, but almost 8 thousand have passed since the beginning of the pandemic. They are mainly Moroccans, Nigerians, Egyptians, Bangladeshis, but also many Italians. Lonely and disabled elderly, large families, mothers with children who lost their jobs during the period of Covid and their already precarious socio-economic situation has plummeted, so much so that they no longer have sufficient means to satisfy basic needs. In March, the many requests that crowded the switchboards of associations like ours and of the Municipality of Turin meant that the latter wondered how to deal with the crisis and created the Solidarity Baskets project involving various associations, cooperatives, entities of the city that have become the 15 hubs in the city that distribute shopping bags. And the Arsenale is one of them.
A very fruitful experience in which a public institution does not delegate to the third sector but collaborates personally by creating a network on the territory that works together in a constructive way, in which everyone makes their potential available.

Every Friday the Municipality truck arrives at the Arsenale bringing pallets of boxes to be distributed according to the number of family members: an average of 15 kg per person of long-life food (milk, pasta , rice, oil, tomato, legumes…) to which is added the providence that comes directly to the Arsenale (cheeses, meat, various sweets…). To date we have distributed 500,000 kg of food. There are about 20 volunteers who have taken responsibility for this service in a stable and continuous way: there are those who call each family to make an appointment for the collection, those who enter the data in the app created for the project, those who welcomes families in the courtyard and guides them in compiling the self-declaration, who distributes the boxes, who acts as a link between the various phases and who delivers the food at home to those who are unable to come to the Arsenale. And the best thing is the atmosphere that has been created in the group: despite the differences in age (young people in their twenties and retirees over 60), Italians, Chinese and Ivorians welcomed each other with esteem, respect and the desire to serve ... And the six hours standing up, with the cold of these days, leave room for the joy of feeling good together for those who suffer!


Cristiana Capitani
NP March 2021