Margherita Aurora, educator of “Liliput” Day Care Center
How did the project come about? Do you have a sense that the local community is aware of the transformation of this area and is benefiting from the project?
The Social Garden was born in Ponticelli eight years ago when, as “Liliput” Day Care Center of the Asl of Naples 1, we asked the municipality to foster an abandoned public park for the rehabilitation of our patients.
The park was a jungle, so we started by creating a network with twenty local associations, schools and parishes in the area. We currently count more than two hundred terraces within the garden.
Along this path we were lucky to meet SGI-Italy’s 8×1000 funds. One of the main goals of the project is to build a place where we can experience a sense of community, because it is not the individual person who takes care of the area, but schools, families and the associations do it. People spontaneously join the reality of the garden, and many do not come here just to take home the produce of the land, which of course is essential, but they fully contribute to the social project. The next step is the creation of a theater, which will be another chance for the area to have its own space, which was previously precluded.
Through the project, grants for green maintenance work have been provided for people with frailty, who are on a path of care and promotion of autonomy.
What are the obstacles you encounter most that undermine the motivation of people with frailty?
The project was born thanks to the “Lilliput” Day Care Center, a service that follows people who are recovering from substance addiction and who need a social context to return to. Obviously, friendship relationships, and very often relationships with relatives, are compromised for these people.
The garden creates opportunities for them to come together to learn how to rebuild healthy relationships and then, through training placements, we give them job grants that allow them to have economic redemption. They experience a situation of disadvantage both from social and working point of view. Initially, the impact was not easy because they were singled out as drug addicts, but as of today everyone is working side by side; it is a beautiful result for us because people have understood that even those with fragility have the right to live a normal life.
The work of the educators is to support the person; there are psychological paths to help them overcome moments of struggle.
Thanks to the garden project, the beneficiaries have the opportunity to experience themselves in a new environment, training themselves to be able to reintegrate into the social, family and work context. Even after the path is finished, the garden gives us the opportunity to continue this accompaniment of the person to support him/her. The beneficiaries know that they always have the possibility to talk to us about their difficulties, but also to share the satisfactions they have achieved along the way.
Antonio Pone, project coordinator for APS Jolie Rouge – Needle Agopuntura Urbana
How important is it to promote cultural and socialization initiatives in particularly vulnerable contexts?
The ALL – Agro Living Lab project is organized in the Ponticelli neighborhood, in the outskirts of Naples, where there are problems both in infrastructure and social marginality.
“Agro Living Lab” is a process of regeneration of one of the big green lungs of the city and it aims to build paths of active citizenship for those many inhabitants who are in conditions of poverty and exclusion. It is a “living laboratory” that involves the community of vegetable gardeners that has been active within that area since 2015 and connects them with the neighborhood to get in touch with local issues. The enhancement of urban greenery is one of the central elements, but the project focuses mainly on promoting cultural activities that involve young people in school dropouts and individuals who are experiencing educational poverty. The desire is also to intervene by creating a container that provides space for the many related actors, from the third sector to schools to informal groups.
How are the regenerative interventions of the project in the affected area taking place?
The interventions are structured in accordance with some of the criteria of urban acupuncture. We start from a general mapping of the area to get to the details; so we analyze a broader area of the neighborhood to tighten up to the functional areas involved in the project.
Everything that is gathered in this first phase of shared inquiry converges in a process of scrutiny: a team of architects and environmental designers interacts with the community of gardeners, the residents and the neighborhood in general, to translate the needs that have emerged into a project. In terms of biodiversity, some areas of the park take the form of a forest, partly because of carelessness, yet for us this is actually a richness in biodiversity that is to be protected. The issue of maintenance is always a challenge because urban parks were conceived at a time when maintenance was more feasible because there were more resources.
Which obstacles are you encountering?
The main obstacles revolve around two issues. The first is of an administrative nature, because green areas in Naples are often the subject of responsibilities spread over several entities, which makes coordination with local governments very complex. Another obstacle is the presence of individuals who pose threats to the park: from the theft of vegetables to more explicit episodes of violence against those who inhabit the project. The logic behind our intervention is to broaden the enjoyment of the park to the entire neighborhood as this represents a strong social defense. Relating with young people, schools and organizations at the territorial level allows us to consolidate the role that the park already plays in a strong way within the neighborhood, the city and in the country, since it’s one of the biggest experiences of gardens in Europe.
We asked O. I., a beneficiary, what being part of this project represents for him
For me taking part in the project is a very important opportunity; since I am from Ponticelli I feel that this project represents a redemption for me and for my neighborhood.
The most significant experience is the collaboration that has been created between us and the gardeners, because we support each other to keep the garden terraces as clean and cared for as much as possible. We built good friendships, if we need a hand we call each other. We are on site Tuesday through Friday, and my duties are mainly mowing grass and cleaning.
My desire for the future is to find a steady job that will allow me to live with peace of mind, both for myself and my family.
Thanks to the project, I am learning many new things that I have never done, such as planting vegetables, pruning plants and cutting trees. The local gardeners have been helping me out, as well as the colleagues included in the project.
I really like being in nature, plus to feel that I am doing something for my neighborhood is very meaningful.
In the past those areas were abandoned, now I see with my own eyes how everything has been transformed. Today it is possible to take a walk and everyone can spend pleasant time in the park, this is a payback for us and for the neighborhood.