Salerno. There are currently eight flavors to choose from. Plenty for those who, until now, couldn't enjoy pizza delivered from outside. Prison rules are strict and don't allow it. But if the pizza is made on-site, inmates will only have to pay three euros to bite into a piping hot Margherita or Marinara. The social pizzeria "La pizza buona dentro e fuori" (Good Pizza Inside and Out) is opening at the Antonio Caputo prison in Salerno. The goal, explains prison director Rita Romano, "is to open the pizzeria to the public from outside." Twenty inmates are participating in the project, funded by the Salerno Chamber of Commerce and the Cassa di Risparmio Salernitana Foundation, and with the support of the City of Salerno, the Comunità Salernitana Foundation, which donated its 5×1000 donation three years ago to this initiative, and Casamica. The two organizations participated in ten fundraising evenings at ten restaurants throughout the province. A total of €25,000 was raised. The ground-floor warehouse, where dusty boxes were stored, was emptied and cleaned by municipal employees and transformed into a dining area. The walls are covered with colorful drawings. A little further away, a marble counter sits next to an oven where two pizza chefs prepare their specialties. There's also a bathroom and a changing room for the staff. For the Campania prison administrator, Antonio Fullone, "the social pizzeria enhances the prison experience," he said while visiting the Salerno prison for the first time. Furthermore, at the end of October, a training course, funded by the Campania Region, will begin for ten inmates who will have the opportunity to earn a professional pizza chef qualification, a qualification they can use upon release from prison. Today's inauguration marks the culmination of the memorandum of understanding signed on November 5th of last year between various institutions, which aims to implement, in a practical manner, the re-educational purpose of prison and the employment of inmates. The idea of opening a social pizzeria in the Salerno prison in Fuorni dates back even further. Specifically, it stems from a conversation some time ago between Roberto Schiavone, president of Humanitas, and Antonello Di Cerbo, who has long been involved in charitable projects. "Today," Romano emphasizes, "is extremely important because it marks a step in the program of opening up the prison system to the outside world. Prison is a place that must open up and become an integral part of society."
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