Italy is launching a plan that will have asylum seekers keeping busy with community projects while waiting to for their asylum status to be confirmed.
Italy has come up with a creative way to help keep refugees busy and offer them a way to repay their shelter. The concept was created to offer an easy way for the refugee’s to repay the Italian Government and locals for the housing they are given.
The Refugees are able to live in small homes instead of refugee camps, in return they do community projects and volunteer their time on cleaning parks and other projects. They can wait up to two years to have their asylum cases heard.
“Many cannot bear not doing anything,” Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “So making themselves useful for a few hours a day for the community that is welcoming them can be a good thing for them psychologically,”
“We’d be at home doing nothing, we have no work, we’d simply eat, sleep,” said Paul Adjei from the Ivory Coast. “So we decided together to help the town, so it can move forwards.”
In the town of Belluno, a 100 or so migrants have painted the town’s railings and school gates and mowed lawns in parks under the supervision of local associations. Mayor Massaro says that the migrants are doing jobs the town cannot afford.
“To put it simply, we thought that what with the difficulties Italy and Europe are experiencing, we all need to invest a little to resolve a problem that is bigger than us”, – Mayor Jacopo Massaro
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