"We are here because there is no refuge where we can hide from ourselves. As long as a person will not confront herself in the eyes and hearts of others, she flees. Until she allows them to share her secrets, there is no escape. Afraid of being known, she can neither know herself nor others—she will be alone.
Where else but in our common ground can we find such a mirror?
Here, together, a person can at last show herself clearly to herself—not as the giant of her dreams, nor the dwarf of her fears, but as a human being, part of a whole, with her own gift to offer. On this ground we can all take root and grow no longer alone as in death, but alive to ourselves and to each other".
Healing the Void
Every morning, this kind of human prayer is recited by the young men and women at the "Don Lorenzo Milani" center in Mestre (VE) when they gather in their different groups.
The center was founded in 1989 to address the emptiness and inability to live that drives so many toward drug addiction. In the years since, nearly a thousand people—about fifteen percent of them women—have passed through its two-year program for liberation from addiction and reintegration into normal life, with roughly two-thirds achieving success. Meanwhile, the center has broadened its work to help people facing other forms of social hardship and to place vulnerable individuals into employment.
Before describing the center's various activities and spirit—one of the most important in Italy—it is worth telling the story of its founding, which is to say, the story of don Franco De Pieri.
Don Franco De Pieri
Born in 1938 and ordained in 1966, don Franco worked primarily with young people in Mestre's main parish. Three years later he became pastor in Oriago, where he focused especially on young people showing signs of social distress.
In 1985 he was assigned to a parish in Mestre's Peep neighborhood, an area with difficult social problems, including widespread drug addiction. To address this, don Franco opened a first reception house in Campalto. That same year, the archbishop of Venice, Marco Cè, asked him to find responses to the spreading youth crisis in the province of Venice—a crisis that was pushing many young people toward addiction and crime.
In 1986 don De Pieri, with several friends, founded the "Don Milani Center for Solidarity," where "the young person who knocks on our door is the principal actor in all our work".
Within a few years, the center had become one of the leading therapeutic communities in the Veneto region.
In 1995 don Franco was chosen as coordinator of the ten Centers for Solidarity in the Veneto-Lombardy area.
Today (2001) he serves as an advisor to the federation of Italian therapeutic communities (which comprises sixty centers) and is vice president of the world federation of therapeutic communities.
The Solidarity Village
On October 27, the Solidarity Village "don Lorenzo Milani" was inaugurated, with various buildings across a twenty-five-hectare area surrounding the old Fort Rossariol near Venice.
The Village offers "a shared space that provides hospitality and the possibility of planning, imagining, creating, and working together for people affected by all forms of hardship, marginalization, and social exclusion".
The village currently houses:
- a women's reception home for women coming from extreme hardship (typically forced prostitution) who are at risk of social exclusion;
- the "Contatti" workshop, part of the "harm reduction" project designed for young people unable to undertake full therapeutic rehabilitation but who, despite their addiction, are given what help is possible to live with dignity;
- the "Master Geppetto" project, which through different pathways allows participants to develop their various capacities. It includes a vocational training program (carpentry and mechanics) aimed at employment;
- the "Open Sesame" project, which provides protected work experience for drug-dependent individuals subject to court-ordered measures.
Method and Vision
To understand the center's method and approach to extreme social hardship, I spoke with don Franco De Pieri (direct and practical) in his modest office in one of the center's original houses, and with Michela Cestarollo (communicative and knowledgeable) from the research center and director of external relations. A core strength of the center is its partnership with the state, the regional government, and public agencies.
The Fort Rossariol land housing the village was granted to the center at no cost. Collaboration with local administration is essential, especially given the expenses of bringing existing buildings into compliance with legal standards. The rules are designed to ensure smooth operation of the communities and are important for protecting staff and preventing improvisation in this most delicate field.
The center has a religious inspiration at its heart, but not catechesis.
Services to young people are free. The center employs trained staff and around a hundred volunteers. The former have specialized training and "work" there; the latter bring the center the breath of solidarity and freedom. Many staff members began as volunteers. Indeed, everyone who works here has a particular spirit beyond technical skill—a spirit we nurture through continuous training courses.
Volunteers work in almost every department and initiative of the center, and above all in the "Families Association" and in organizing recreational, sports, cultural, and craft activities—an important part of what the center offers to people struggling with addiction.
The Families Association, founded in 1986, brings together parents, relatives, and friends in "self-help groups" who wish to stay close to those in the addiction-recovery program. In these groups members work to understand and examine the value systems and relationships from which the young person fled into drugs—hoping that when he or she leaves the program, they will find a changed family environment.
The Project Uomo
Beyond the associational side, all center activities are run through cooperatives. The "Unione" Cooperative (a social enterprise of type A) includes the Therapeutic sector (founded in 1986) and the Research Center (founded in 1995).
Under the Therapeutic sector fall the following projects: Project Uomo, Master Geppetto, Mother and Child, Day Programs, Ca' Turcata, Ulisse, Casa di Peter, and the Diagnosis and Evaluation Service.
"Project Uomo" is the core of the addiction-recovery pathway. It has three phases with corresponding structures: Reception. Therapeutic Community. Reintegration.
Young people with addictions arrive at the Don Milani Center always through the public service (SERT).
The public service has become less rigid over the years and provokes less suspicion among young people in crisis. The collaboration between public and private sectors here is a model for Italy. The typical young person arriving at the center has invested all their energy in a "negative" lifestyle where there was no possibility of caring for their body, their education, or their own important interests. Behind them lies a series of failures—emotional and practical—and so they have lost all self-respect. "Project Uomo" aims to help the person recover the resources they have lost, beginning with self-respect, and to take responsibility for their own life.
The staff member begins with this approach: your life has been a failure; let's understand why.
When a young person enters the Reception facilities, they begin to live days structured by rules and limits. There are schedules to keep, tasks to do, responsibilities—for the sake of both the individual and the household. At this stage, the staff member acts as a parent.
Then the young person joins self-help groups, where staff members (two for every eight young people) act as a mirror so the person can "see" themselves and begin to help themselves. The staff member is careful not to create dependence; the goal of the project (typically six months in Reception, twelve in the Therapeutic Community, and six in Reintegration) is to help people stand on their own feet.
During the Therapeutic Community phase, the young person meets with family members, who meanwhile have been participating in self-help groups through the Families Association. Often these early meetings with family are deeply charged with emotion. Of young people who complete the program, roughly one-third relapse into addiction. Those who relapse and return to the center are placed in a different program. Of these, thirty to forty percent cannot succeed in "getting out." For them, the center provides "harm reduction" interventions—for instance, mobile units to distribute clean syringes, or papier-mâché art workshops for people on methadone.
The Center's Structure
This gives some sense of how the Don Milani Center operates and how it is organized. A full description of other activities would be too lengthy; here is a list instead, so anyone interested in a particular program can ask for more information.
The Research Center, the other branch of the "Unione" Cooperative, runs these activities: Archive and Documentation, Research, Project Design, Evaluation, Prevention, Public Relations and Fundraising, Training, Projects, and Collaboration with Public Agencies.
There are also three Type B Social Cooperatives: Labora, Co.Ge.S., and Donna Lavoro.
- LABORA (founded in 1991) operates in: Building Maintenance, Metal Carpentry, Carpentry, Mechanics, Poster Affixing, Painting, Agriculture, Drywall Installation, and Protected Workshops.
- Co.Ge.S. handles Refugee Camp Management, Administrative Services (including secretarial and switchboard contracts for three major hospitals), Data Archiving, and Cafeteria Management.
- DONNA-LAVORO provides Childcare, Social Support Services, Tourism Services, and Cultural Services.