The adolescent home "Rosa dei Venti" is looking for a new home for eight young Africans who arrived in Sicily without their parents. It is finding that no one wants to rent to them because of the color of their guests' skin.
The group home for teens "Rosa dei Venti" in Palermo has been searching for two months for a new location to host its young guests: one local and eight young people from Africa who came to Sicily as unaccompanied minors after a long crossing of the Strait of Sicily on migrant boats. However, the response to inquiries is always the same: "if they're foreigners, we don't want them in our home".
Paola Grasso, an educator and the director of the Rosa dei Venti group home, speaks about ordinary racism in a city that has become known for its spirit of welcoming. "The home in which we've been up until now is too small, and it wouldn't be dignified for our guests to continue to live there," Grasso said. "That's why we've started looking for a new home, but so far the response has been disheartening. Every time we say that the young people are from Africa, or in any case that they're foreigners, we get a flat-out rejection," she said.
Unfortunately there's an almost insurmountable prejudice - coming from a certain place is associated almost with certain danger. It's true that some group homes present problems, but the reason isn't the nationality of those who live there; rather, it's the conditions in which they are housed, or the difficulties that the young people carry with them,
Grasso said.
Young people between 16 and 20 years old
The home currently hosts an adolescent from Palermo and eight foreign unaccompanied minors between the ages of 16 and 20 years old. One of them, Omar, recently finished high school and graduated with his diploma. The young people come from Gambia, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Mali. The home receives 45 euros a day from the regional government for each of them (compared to the 54 euros per day allocated for Italians) for all of their expenses: rent, food, utilities, allowances, and salaries for personnel. There are seven people employed at the home: a director, five employees, and one aid worker.
The young men take an Italian language course at the university and then usually continue with their studies. Currently, two of them are studying at a technical school for mechanics, and another of them wants to graduate from a hospitality institute. "They are trying to build a future for themselves," Grasso said. "And they need help".