The Municipality of Macerata has activated two specific projects to face the Covid19 Emergency providing help and assistance to its citizens: Macerata Vicina and SOSteniamoci.
The Macerata Vicina project was born with the aim of providing support to the fragile population during the lockdown. During these two months people in need hav had the possibility to call a toll-free number active every day from 08.30 to 18.30. A group of volunteers was always available and ready to operate from the headquarters of the Social services provider company (Azienda Pubblica Servizi alla Parsona IRCR). During these two months, they offered their services to carry out home delivery of necessities (food, medicines, bags for recycling and IPR donated by various associations) to all the people asking for help.
The phone number registerd a total of 3,228 calls, all of which were answered to the full satisfaction of the citizens, as witnessed by the thanks that arrived in the feedback. The success of the project comes from the effective networking between public, private and voluntary organizations that have constantly coordinated, 23 meetings and about 2,000 online contacts in just two months!
The project “#SOSteniamoci – no one saves himself alone” includes two actions: a crowdfunding campaign and a food collection in supermarkets. For this last action, the following have actively collaborated: the Social Services for the reception of requests for help, the Listening and First Reception Centre for the operational management of reports and the Civil Protection, with the contribution of private social workers and volunteers from the National Civil Service, for the operational collection and home delivery of food parcels; parcels made up of the goods generously donated by the citizens.
Particularly significant was the donation made by an American citizen of Macerata origin, who bought 52 kilos of pasta from a pasta factory in the Sibylline Mountains that had been hit by the earthquake to donate to the citizens most in need, thus combining two acts of solidarity and two continents.
Paola Piras, trainer employed by Farsi Prossimo Onlus, says that the answer has to be found at a relational level. It comes from this intuition ‘From distance learning to close learning’, a training course addressed to the team of Italian as a second language teachers, which focuses on relational needs. From one meeting to another, starting from a reflection on strategies to reduce distances in distance learning and on the ways to relate through the new tools available, they explore platforms and software to interact remotely and their potential, the forms of teaching through synchronous and asynchronous classes.
