To defend a culture of legality

Nicolas : Can you present us the Libera association.

Pia : You find Libera in different parts of Italy and its aim consists in fighting the mafia. It is concerned by the defence of the culture of legality, supporting the work of the police and of magistrate. It has also a preventive action and proposes educative projects in schools. At the national level, I am responsible of the sector "school". These last years "Libera" has expanded a lot as there is a great demand coming from the schools but also from society to defend this culture of legality. It's a fact, that there is an increasing small criminality and deviance among the young people. So, we are setting a whole group of projects to train teachers how to work with children.

When I came for the first time to this school, I was struck by all these children's drawings around sentences such as:  "we have to respect the law", "fight against mafia"...How do you work with children on this matter?

It's true. The school is full of statements made by youngsters engaged for legality against the mafias. We organise meetings, special moments of reflection in the classes, with special persons, like, for instance, Rita Borsellino, the sister of the judge assassinated 13 years ago. This is to help children to understand how important it is to respect rules, to improve environment around them, and also to fight against mafia. We organise specific projects, like we do now, where we invite pupils to reflect on the confiscation of goods (houses, grounds...) belonging to the Mafiosi: how to recuperate these goods, to change them in useful places for society. It's very important to put the children directly on contact with the phenomenon of the mafia to help them understand that the mafia, in taking the work and the goods of people, are getting rich at their expenses.

Today, what has achieved this movement working to recuperate the goods taken by the mafia?

Ten years long, these goods, like houses, for instance were given to associations to restore them in leisure centres for minors or for poor children and elderly people. These goods are meant for a local use in order to ameliorate the living conditions of the people most in need in our society. On the other hand, there is plenty of farming land, especially in Sicily: cooperatives are created, constituted by local young people who have started to cultivate the land again and to produce. All these products contribute to the fabrication of oil, pasta, marmalades, tinned tomatoes; they come out with a label with the name of the association "Libera" on it and the origin of these products that come from seized land from the mafia. We organize several meetings to cook these products for big "legality" meals. Nevertheless, we are really concerned because the government wishes to modify the law allowing associations to use these goods, with the result that these associations won't be able anymore to work on these seized goods. This law would be in favour of the mafia that would, in a way, hold back its goods. According to Giovanni Falcone, there are two things worrying the mafia: wealth - taking away her wealth, diminish its power, and makes it weaker - and prison: a severe prison sentence system weakens considerably the mafia.

You said that children are not directly concerned by mafia, but later on when they grow up, they get more involved. What do you think of our theatre workshops with the children from Palermo?

Children are concerned by the mafia. For instance, in our school, we have children that come from Mafiosi families and whose parents are in jail. We need to carry on with our projects and to let young people meet the magistrates and the police forces. We have to give them the image of a State, an institution that cares for them, looks after them, keeps an eye on their evolution and also offers them an alternative to avoid getting involved with the mafia system. It's clear that the majority of youngsters live in a reality where the mafia exists but fortunately they aren't directly concerned. For these children our projects serve to pass on a culture and to develop their critical mind to be able to evaluate all what they are offered and to help them to choose, when they become adults.

Another very important thing for us is to keep children at school. In Sicily there is a very strong school desertion phenomenon, bound with the risk of getting into the groups of small criminality or even to become criminals. In deserting school, they live in the streets where they are in danger of joining gangs and to end up in the penal circuit. In order to fight against it, we need a lot of stimulating projects, like the theatre workshops offered by the Company, offering a European opening. It has been a very interesting chance for our young children to get out of their environment, usually closed, and to project themselves in a much more open confrontation. We hope that we can start again and carry on this experience.

How did our workshops widen up the horizon of the children?

Our opinion is that in some social milieus, teenagers do need some cultural stimulation. According to our experience, young people sometimes don't even know their own town, and they don't even get out of their neighbourhood. They spend hours in front of the television, especially girls, whereas boys stay in the streets and in the games room. School must keep this essential role of offering young people diverse cultural horizons.
I think that school should offer young people something that helps them to grow up, to be faced, as for in your workshops, to diverse cultural realities, a different language and the exploration of a non verbal language ... That way, children amuse themselves and want to stay at school and to invest themselves in school activities; they also learn that there is a different cultural dimension from what they experience everyday, in their family, in the street or watching on TV some shows completely void of substance.

In helping children to open their own cultural horizons, you help them to adopt a critical position and to make more responsible choices consciously and that are not dictated by fashion or anything else. If young people engage themselves in a more cultural approach, they will be able to react against bad influences from society, a certain type of society that can marginalize them and lead them, in early age, to criminality.

Submitted by rédacteur on Tue, 14/10/2008 - 16:26

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