Filippo is 25 and from Rome. Since 2016, he has been part of the Cottolengo community in Turin, serving at the Piccola Casa della Divina Provvidenza—first as a civil service volunteer, now as a staff member. His testimony offers a window into a reality often dismissed as merely a shelter for vulnerable people.
When I first arrived, my understanding of the Cottolengo was limited to an outdated idea: a simple refuge for people pushed to society's margins, with nowhere else to turn. In truth, though offering shelter and care to the forgotten remains its foundation, the Cottolengo has evolved far beyond that. Today it operates across many directions and forms of aid—nursing homes and hospitals, schools and sports programs as tools for inclusion, a soup kitchen that distributes not just meals but clothing, blankets, and essentials to anyone who needs them.
I began my service at the school, working as a civil service volunteer. I assisted the special education teachers in the classroom, at lunch, and during outdoor breaks, trying to help carry out the individualized activities designed for each child, offering both practical and emotional support. Throughout the year, we volunteers encountered multiple realities and different challenges: attention disorders, learning disabilities classified as special educational needs, and broader developmental disorders like autism.
In class, we learned how to use specific strategies and tools to bridge the gaps created by disability—PECS images to support communication, conceptual maps that help children with attention and memory difficulties. At lunch and during outdoor activities, we had more freedom to shape the work ourselves, building direct contact with the children and the class group (always under the supervision of a school staff member). That first year as a volunteer prepared me well for becoming a full staff member. I do the same work now, but with greater responsibility.
The Cottolengo School serves two primary classes through fifth grade and two middle school classes through eighth grade. Though housed in the same building and governed by a single rector, the two schools operate under separate administrations, ensuring that both teaching and administrative staff are qualified and specialized for their respective levels.
The school embodies the Cottolengo's founding principle: no one is different. In each classroom, children with disabilities learn alongside peers, with one-to-one special education teachers who support both them and the entire class, enabling everyone to move forward together. The school's goal is true educational inclusion—achieved through individualized strategies for each child and activities that build belonging in the class group. Real inclusion happens when school inclusion becomes social inclusion. It starts in the classroom and extends to shared experiences beyond it.
I chose to stay because I came to understand what it means to live with a disability that prevents you from communicating, that marks you as unsuitable, that cuts you off from the play, friendship, and shared life that should be every child's right. Children who would be rejected elsewhere are integrated here into a school and community that abandons no one, working toward equality in humanity and education. That's what moved me to remain—and the organization supported me, allowing me to finish my university degree and become a full educator.
Living in this reality daily has shown me how prejudice distorts the common view of the Cottolengo as a place of inadequate people. The truth is different. The Piccola Casa rests on the foundation of happiness: it is a place where people serve the most fragile, discovering their own weakness against the strength of those who, despite physical and mental disabilities, live with full dignity and offer a smile.
The symbol of the Piccola Casa is a blue heart, the symbol of love, because that is what the Cottolengo is: a place where people give themselves to each other in love, and in return receive the love of those who, amid countless difficulties, find the strength to smile.
