We join the community at lunch and learn more from president Gaspare Ferella and Anna Romano, head of social planning.
24 July, thirty-seven years ago: the day a group of young people with mental disabilities and a group of scouts took their first trip to the seaside together. That experience went so well that it became permanent. Comunità 24luglio – Handicappati E Non was born to support families through a daily center, welcoming people with different disabilities and difficulties into a community of mutual care.
The center runs on voluntary community principles. It welcomes people with various disabilities and social struggles, organizing educational and recreational activities.
Nine years ago, an earthquake devastated the city and threatened to destroy everything the 24luglio had built. Instead, it proved a turning point. Operating from emergency tents, the community grew stronger, became more visible, and drew support from across the city.
The current building—temporary for seven years now—overlooks a plaza that barely existed a few years ago. But the plaza thrums with shared life: other cultural associations, social initiatives, a theater, a contemporary art museum. The 24luglio is part of something larger.
The daily center serves about forty people with disabilities and social struggles from L'Aquila and nearby villages. It engages twelve civil service volunteers, roughly sixty active volunteers—almost half the membership. Each workshop is tailored to individual strengths and made possible by private and public funding. The community draws on skilled professionals who donate their time: recently, a participatory architecture lab in partnership with the University of L'Aquila, where participants study alternative city routes and build scale models.
Soon the association will have an apartment again for autonomy training: short stays for two or three people learning daily life skills and how to move through the city as participants in its life.
We ask how they attract so many young volunteers. Word of mouth, they tell us. People see genuine welcome, not theory or therapy. The center isn't marked as a charity or rehabilitation site—just a community with rules about personal health. School and university outreach campaigns have helped, along with extensive media work: a 2013 film called La mano nel cappello (Hand in Cup—a handicap term from horse racing) that shows daily life with its struggles and joys for those who start with a disadvantage.
What about families? They work closely with them, trust them. Some families are members themselves. We ask about plans around Italy's "after us" law, which offers support for disabled people after parents die. The families, they explain, are too caught managing daily emergencies—the minibus that doesn't come—to imagine the possibilities the law describes. And the 24luglio, while strong in daily crisis support, lacks the professional structure to guide that larger planning.
Among the training workshops—some vocational—is one on photography and another on journalism, video, and more (funded by the Waldensian Table). Both last about eighteen months.
At the end of the courses, the community imagines real work projects and weighs each person's proposals. Gianluca loves photography and wants to learn video; he greatly admires Osvaldo Bevilacqua, host of Sereno variabile, a program that travels Italy discovering hidden artistic, natural, and gastronomic treasures. Gianluca proposes making a documentary about unknown beautiful Italy. The idea excites everyone, but they decide to shape it differently—more timely, more journalistically sharp. The community will make a documentary about migrants in four small villages around the Central Apennines, places with the highest ratio of migrants to residents. The question: how do these communities handle welcome?
It mirrors the heart of 24luglio itself: welcoming the person with temporary disability, permanent disability, migrant status. Welcome is one thing. It's the style that defines community life.
The crew includes four people with disabilities, some community volunteers, and professional camera operators. Young director Francesco Paolucci guides them with wisdom, sensitivity, and honesty. He's been part of 24luglio for years—we met his father on our visit, a volunteer cook. Francesco brings young photographers and cameramen from L'Aquila who held preparatory workshops before departure. For a week, a minibus carries them through Central Italy for filming.
No script. No outline. Only an opening conversation about what they think about migrants—probably the simplest, most obvious thoughts. But that didn't stop anyone from showing up fully and opening to encounter with deep respect, never condescension. The aim was to discover how we relate to the different by starting from our own difference.
The final product is a documentary—really a meta-documentary—fifty minutes long, surprisingly simple and clear.
One of the journalists who led the investigation workshop was Angelo Figorilli from Tg2 dossier. When he saw the finished film, he wanted to broadcast it. It's rare for programs made this way to air on competing networks, but Rai and Tv2000 both showed it.
The documentary follows four stops in strict chronological order. You feel the journey made by the four reporters—Benito, Barbara, Gianluca, and Giovanni—not just in their interview style but in the substance of what they discover.
In its simplicity, it shows aspects of migration in a way far less anxious than other reports manage, yet it doesn't hide real difficulties. The locations themselves surprise: concrete realities where welcome happens, where migrants tell their own stories. The direction surprises for its near-invisibility—so respectful, so careful. The editing is honest, assembling material from both the reporters and the professionals. And there's an engaging play of gazes that gives depth to the meeting between peers and strangers. A beautiful country and a beautiful way of seeing it. We recommend it. It's on RaiPlay for another year.
By Cristina Tersigni, 2017