The Eco Cooperative asked the 10 presidents of the Municipalities of Naples:
“What are the programs for children in the next council term?”
Valeria Nigido: “In Naples 130 thousand children, they are the eleventh municipality”.
Sofia Flute: “School at the centre of social policies”.
Nursery schools, afternoon school openings, garden and park maintenance. Neighborhood oratories and consultations with local associations to create a “Child-friendly Municipality”. These are the commitments that the ten presidents of the Municipalities of Naples have made towards Neapolitan children, one hundred and thirty thousand, according to an Istat estimate processed by tuttuitalia.it (https://www.tuttitalia.it/campania/59-napoli/statistiche/indici-demografici-struttura-popolazione/) between 0 and 14 years old.
The ten presidents of the municipalities were interviewed by the Eco Social Cooperative, whose mission is to look at the world through the eyes of children, interpreting their needs and asking their questions. A transversal fact emerges: giving children safe meeting places by involving schools. Hence the need for discussion tables between Municipalities, Town Councils and School Directors in order to open the institutes in the afternoon and increase all possible activities to offer Neapolitan children workshops, sports, playrooms, and meeting places.
The second commitment is to take care of parks and gardens. Neapolitan children need to meet outdoors in safe places that are too often closed or degraded today. Working gardens and carousels are a priority for every Municipality president.
Finally, the welfare ideas that identify the individual neighborhoods. In the center of Naples the proposal of the City Angels, at Mercato-Pendino the attention to the life of students. In Stella the Consulta delle Associazioni; in Poggioreale the map of services for children; in Vomero the denied sport objective; in the eastern area the request for more resources; in Secondigliano the attention to the elderly; in Fuorigrotta and Bagnoli the neighborhood oratories. In Scampia the focus is on the many green areas present.
Valeria Nigido (president of the Eco Cooperative): “We conducted this survey to raise awareness among local authorities, those closest to us citizens, about the needs of children. In Naples there are 130 of them, a city within a city. An eleventh municipality. This makes us understand how the needs of children, who are at the center of our social mission, must be taken into consideration like those of adults so as to make a community grow harmoniously”
Sofia Flute (Eco cooperative consultant): "It is nice to know that at the heart of the social policies of the presidents of municipalities there is a closer synergy with the school world in order to achieve the goal of a systematic opening in the afternoon. School is the fulcrum of the growth of our children and giving them the opportunity to have as a reference a welcoming, safe place, in which to spend their days is not only a contribution to education but a true transmission of values, those that are missing in today's society".
These are all the answers of the ten presidents of the Municipalities to the question posed by the Eco cooperative: What should children expect from this term of office?
I Municipalities (Chiaia, San Ferdinando, Posillipo), Giovanna Mazzone:
"On the education front, we want to organize a round table with the school institutions for a connection between the school system, the health system and the social system to promote mutual understanding. The contribution of the school will be invaluable in defining a program of themed meetings in which minors, families and institutions that deal with childhood and adolescence can participate. Our goal is also to consolidate and multiply the existing initiatives and projects for the promotion and development of the person in various social areas: from the food bank for the most needy, to a space for socio-educational aggregation for disabled children, from supporting the marginalized who live on the streets with the solidarity work carried out by the City Angels, to supporting frail elderly people at home, even with low-threshold actions".
II Municipality (Avvocata, Montecalvario, Mercato, Pendino, Porto, San Giuseppe), Roberto Marino:
"The goal is to get children and young people out of their homes to fight gambling addiction but also give them a safe place to spend their afternoons. And this can only be school. We will turn to nursery schools, schools, universities to make ours a student-friendly municipality and in this we believe we will find the support of Mayor Manfredi who is sensitive to these issues. The implementation of nursery schools will also serve to help parents re-enter the world of work. I will try to have a direct relationship with schools to fight the phenomenon of school dropout. And then social gardens, useful spaces and open gyms for local children, raising awareness of the relationship with nature".
III Municipality (Stella, San Carlo all'Arena), Fabio Greco:
"Our first goal is to create, within six months, a Consultation of Associations to create a network in the territory and start concrete projects. All the organizations that deal with sociality and minors must be involved and we want to create a synergy with them, with the parishes and with the schools. All this to develop activities and workshops that enhance childhood and engage children. The third Municipality will be the hub of the Consultation to have all the associations and social organizations around an operational and functional institutional table".
IV Municipality (San Lorenzo, Vicaria, Poggioreale, Industrial Area), Maria Caniglia:
"The protection of childhood and adolescence is a crucial issue in municipal social policies and specifically in the territory of my Municipality. The first action to be implemented will be aimed at drawing up a map of services for childhood and families present in the different neighborhoods precisely in order to understand the current offer. It will be necessary to strengthen socio-educational services of a daytime and aggregative nature, work on the implementation of activities that can hook adolescents, also enhancing their passions and talents, finally it will be necessary to aim at building a Municipality on a child's scale with the restoration of formal and informal spaces dedicated to them. The protection of adolescents' rights involves two spheres of society, education and adequate urban structures. For education it is necessary to activate a network with the Municipality and the Region to promote programs and projects that can strengthen the role of schools as a place of growth but also as a meeting place beyond school hours. Activities that can stimulate an education that includes art, sports and why not even fun. As far as our territory is concerned, interventions are needed to create spaces dedicated to the youngest, such as gardens, play areas, a dedicated library, study spaces. It is also necessary to activate a close collaboration with the central services and the Municipality to create a memorandum of understanding with the labor inspectorate to reduce the phenomenon of school dropout. The fourth Municipality will promote this Protocol”.
V Municipality (Vomero, Arenella), Clementina Cozzolino:
"One of the objectives to be achieved with this new council will be the opening of new nurseries, playrooms and supplementary services for children. This will significantly reduce waiting lists and help families reconcile work hours with family care times. Nurseries, playrooms and public childcare services will also allow families with economic difficulties to access an adequate educational offer for their children. The covid emergency, today more than ever, places us in front of a new economic crisis, new poverty. In agreement with the municipal and regional administration, it will be necessary to put in place tools to combat educational poverty, all children have the right to a quality educational offer regardless of their economic and social condition. Furthermore, we will work for a child-friendly municipality. The parks and gardens of the municipality are in a state of degradation and abandonment and are unsafe with broken, dilapidated and numerically insufficient carousels. I think of the Camaldoli Park closed for years, I think of the state of the Mascagna Park, the Villa Floridiana, the gardens of via Iannelli, the meeting spaces like Piazza Immacolata. We will have to work to have inclusive parks, accessible to children with disabilities (with motor or sensory disabilities) and the important resources that will come from the recovery fund will also be able to help us in this. Finally, I think of the sport denied to many children. Well, we must work to guarantee all children access to sport, it must be a right of all children to access sport. I think of school gyms, rather than Collana. Free rates to allow access to sporting activities to children from families in economic difficulty. Sport plays an important social role. For all these issues, it will be essential to bring together local social services, social cooperatives, local educational institutions, and parishes because alone we can't get anywhere".
VI Municipality (Ponticelli, Barra, San Giovanni a Teduccio), Alessandro Fucito:
"We need to implement an innovative and useful working method to overcome the critical issues of the system and ensure that, for example, on the assistance to minors, all the actors (school, ASL, court, municipality, region, etc.) are involved and can collaborate to act in an incisive and concrete way. More generally, the most important problem is that of the economic measures that need to be increased, given that in Naples only a quarter of the resources spent in the north are invested in welfare. On this front, I believe that the Region can intervene significantly given the law 285/97 (in favor of childhood and adolescence). As a Municipality, our role of direction for the next programming will not be lacking, while the main intervention tool of the Area Social Plan remains".
VII Municipality (Miano, Secondigliano, San Pietro a Patierno), Antonio Troiano:
“Seniors, children, anti-violence centers. These are the three cornerstones on which the council of Antonio Troiano, president of the VII Municipality, will focus in relation to welfare. “We have many projects and as outgoing councilor we have already worked a lot in recent years. The ones closest to our hearts concern the weaker groups. I am thinking of recovering spaces for the elderly, which does not only mean the club where they can play cards but offering meeting places in parks, in the neighborhood, in addition to being present at their homes. And then the children with a synergic action with the schools that will develop afternoon reception projects. Paying attention, however, to the quality and cleanliness of the structures involved. And again, attention to greenery by pressing the relevant bodies. Finally, the anti-violence centers on women following the experience of what already exists and which we strengthened in the previous council”
VIII Municipality (Piscinola, Marianella, Chiaiano, Scampia), Nicola Nardella:
“The first measure I will work on will be the approval of a regulation of municipal greenery. Parks can be the epicenter of social life in a territory. For this to happen, they need to be crossed by citizens, schools, committees and associations that consider them as places where the visions of growth of the territory can be given substance. The VIII Municipality, from Chiaiano to Scampia, has an enormous wealth in terms of greenery. I smile bitterly when I think that it is like possessing a treasure without being aware of it. From the attention that must be paid to the short supply chain of agricultural production in the hilly area, to the urban gardens that could be born in Scampia, passing through the experiences of “nature classrooms”, in truth already in some cases realized by some associations, it is necessary to take the ecological issue as a priority on the political agenda”.
IX Municipality (Soccavo, Pianura), Andrea Saggiomo:
"Childhood-related activities are very important and we intend to activate active collaborations with schools and parishes in the area. All this to support concrete projects and combat phenomena such as school dropout and deviance. On the front of green areas and public parks, which are a priority for us, we will work to quickly implement the agreement already signed between the Region and the Municipality for their maintenance and care. Public parks are a heritage of the area to be protected and enhanced".
X Municipality (Fuorigrotta, Bagnoli), Carmine Sangiovanni:
English: "I believe that the liveability of adolescents and children in the area is an absolute priority of this new administration at a central level and extended to the Municipalities of Naples. I think that an element that unites young people and children, regardless of their age, is the impossibility of enjoying public spaces in safety: squares, equipped and unequipped green areas. Therefore, proper maintenance of flowerbeds will be guaranteed, pruning of tall trees that together with poor lighting have caused these areas to become unsafe places and not suitable for the recreation and free time of children, families, nor frequented by young adolescents who, in the absence of safe meeting points, wander around the neighborhood in a disjointed way without a fixed destination. I also imagine greater coordination with relative support for neighborhood oratories that together with the world of associations play an important role with their many recreational, sporting, cultural activities, which they put into practice every day amidst many difficulties, lack of economic resources and spaces in which to carry out such praiseworthy initiatives. My priorities will be these without forgetting the ancestral delays and shortages of nursery schools below real needs. There is a lot of work to do, but I am sure that with Mayor Manfredi in synergy with the municipalities, all these things that the citizens of Naples and this beautiful community have unfortunately been waiting for too long can be realized.”
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