Refugees bring Italian village back to life

Tiny Sant'Alessio in Aspromonte in southern Italy has been welcoming families and migrants for three years in a project which not only provides humanitarian assistance but brings with it invaluable economic and social benefits.

Over the years, the village of Sant'Alessio has dwindled to only 330 inhabitants, many of them elderly. The steep cobbled streets are deserted and most windows are shuttered, residents having left over the years for better work opportunities in Turin, Milan or even as far away as Australia.

However, in an attempt to reverse the trend, the council has been renting eight empty flats to house up to 35 migrants at a time as part of the national SPRAR network (Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees). With just 26,000 places, the network is only a small part of Italy's reception system, which hosts more than 176,000 people. Here, migrants attend an Italian cooking lesson.

Migrants and residents spend time together at the main bar of Sant'Alessio. Bar owner Celestina Borrello, whose son left years ago to find work in Belgium, says: "the village was emptying, so if there's a little movement now, it's a good thing. We know what it means to leave our land," she adds.

The village is currently home to an Iraqi Kurdish family, young people from Ghana, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal and this Gambian mother, Hawa with her baby, Lamin. Everything is done to help the newcomers get back on their feet, from Italian lessons to legal, medical and psychological assistance, vocational training and social activities such as gardening, cooking and dancing classes.

"Our mission is both humane and humanitarian, that's the most important thing," says Stefano Calabro, a police officer who has been mayor of Sant'Alessio since 2009. The project has created full or part-time jobs for 16 people including seven locals - from social workers to Italian teachers and cultural mediators.

It also has prevented the closure of the village's basic services, namely a bar, small supermarket, doctor's surgery and pharmacy. With funds to spend on services, the council has been able to open a small gym open to all residents and upkeep a lush sports field overlooking the valley, where the newcomers regularly challenge the team from a nearby drug rehabilitation center.

After six months to a year here, some of the refugees managed to find work in the region, others headed elsewhere. Salifu, from Ghana decided to stay. Sant'Alessio may not offer much in the way of career opportunities, but a cheerful Salifu says: "We're not going anywhere." After months in Sicily's overcrowded Mineo camp, just small things like quick doctor appointments here seem a luxury.

"Sant'Alessio has been our prototype," says the head of the association behind the project Luigi De Filippis. He points out that there is scope for the project to go across Italy and beyond. "There are vast areas affected by the same depopulation in northern Italy and elsewhere in Europe."