Educittà is a project in Venice to offer summer courses in the Italian language and civics for migrants.
Migrants in Venice can learn Italian and the study the rights and duties of citizenship thanks to ''Educittà''. The project is organized by the city of Venice and the University Ca' Foscari. The aim is to "improve integration and the respect for rules by immigrant citizens regularly residing in the city''.
Italian and civics at parks
Besides improving communication by training basic language skills, courses also convey the main concepts of civics as in cohabitation rules, the rights and duties of citizenship, personal and collective responsibility.
Courses to help integration
The initiatives are possible thanks to the cooperation of volunteer groups and associations promoting culture who work in the city's parks. ''These courses are precious tools that will allow to communicate, teach and convey important concepts, like respecting rules, culture and values of the host country on which any effective integration process is based'', commented Simone Venturini, the councilor for social cohesion of the city of Venice.T
Focus on women
he initiative will continue in the fall with more specific training on rights and duties in healthcare, employment and housing. ''We have chosen to mainly address women because they are more easily excluded from civic circuits and socialization processes outside the home and because they are more exposed to isolation and thus unaware of their rights and duties'', explained Venturini.''By working on the language skills of immigrant citizens it will also be possible to prevent problems stemming from a poor knowledge of the Italian language, like for example difficulty in accessing public services and the resulting slowdown of services for everybody''.