Save the Children: ensuring socio-educational spaces in vulnerable areas

To ensure that socio-educational spaces are available to young people in the country’s most vulnerable areas. This is the proposal put forward by Save the Children during the hearing before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the suburbs. “What we are asking for,” said Lorenzo Rossi of the Save the Children Youth Movement, “stems from the need we feel to be together, to share moments and experiences. We want safe and accessible physical spaces where we can meet.”

According to Giorgia D’Errico, Director of Institutional Relations at Save the Children, “a concrete commitment is needed from the institutions to ensure accessible, safe and open spaces for girls, boys and young people. We cannot accept that their future should depend on the neighbourhood in which they are born”. For this reason, she added, “we have drawn up a draft bill aimed at creating socio-educational centres in the most vulnerable areas: safe and welcoming places, open all year round, where young people can get involved, helping to shape the programme of cultural, sporting and recreational activities, and receive educational, psychological and social support”.

Under Save the Children’s proposal, as outlined to the Committee, socio-educational centres will be established in the most vulnerable areas – identified on the basis of objective vulnerability indicators derived from official data – and will function as community-based educational facilities, open free of charge in the afternoons, in the evenings, at weekends and during the summer, dedicated to boys, girls and adolescents. The activities, which will always be co-designed with the young people themselves, will be planned and delivered within a stable collaborative network guaranteed by Community Education Agreements between Local Social Services, schools and third-sector organisations.