Purpose:
Enhance social inclusion of women - both foreign and Italian - through cultural and recreational activities.
Stimulus/Rationale:
Within the framework of gender equality and intersectionality, education and welcoming and social integration, the City of Novellara launched a project in 2017 to enhance social inclusion of women. The project offers support to foreign citizens providing translations and information as well as helping them with bureaucracy and social related issues.
Process:
The project started with Italian language courses and grew into a “socialisation” course. The project is still ongoing with a wide variety of activities. In summary, the project provides courses in Italian (level A1, A2, and B1) as well as intercultural cooking and sewing classes. Meetings with healthcare professional's such gynaecologists or paediatricians are also scheduled. Finally, recreational activities such as polaroid photography, a film club, creative workshops, a class on the history of photography and cooking lessons are organised.
In addition, cultural mediators have weekly office hours at URP (the public relations office) and they also take part in other activities in other offices upon request.
Civil society organisations also cooperate with the project such as Proloco (no-profit organisation that organises events to promote the territory), Milad (Turkish cultural association) and Coop (Italian consumers' cooperatives). Moreover, the local Sikh temple Gurdwara Singh Saba also cooperates with the project. The cultural mediators are provided by the social cooperative Dimora di Abramo.
Impact:
A space for interaction has been created and continue its activities thanks to a diversified offer, ranging from film forums to sewing courses, from cooking seminars to creative workshops, from sharing various religious festivities to meetings with paediatricians and pedagogues, from computer courses to driving licence courses.
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