The Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (Sprar) is composed of local groups who organise welcoming projects with the goal of “immigrant integration”, envisaging the interlocking dimensions of information, accompaniment, assistance and orientation that function together to create individual pathways of socio-economic integration.
The local projects of Sprar are characterised by an active awareness-raising, shared by big cities and small centres, metropolitan areas and small towns of the province. In contrast to the European view, in Italy the realisation of Sprar projects of small to medium size – conceived and carried out at the local level, with the precious support of third sector institutions and the direct participation of local players in their neighbourhoods – contributes to building and reinforcing a welcoming culture in these communities and encourages the existence of pathways for the socio-economic integration of the beneficiaries.
All the local projects of the Protection System, within the scope of enabling immigrant integration, beyond providing food and shelter, provide for accompanied social activities, which are aimed at increasing knowledge of the area and at effective access to local services, among which are social and health services. Activities to facilitate the understanding of Italian are also organised, comprising instruction for adults, enrolment in schools for minors of compulsory school age, and also the dissemination of legal information on the procedures for recognition under international protection and on the rights and responsibilities of beneficiaries in relation to their status.
With the objective of accompanying every single person received along a pathway to regain their personal autonomy, Sprar’s local projects round out immigrant integration with services tuned to people’s socio-economic integration. Formative courses and courses for professional requalification have been developed to promote the integration of migrants into the workforce, and so that measures are in place for their access to housing.
Within Sprar there are also, furthermore, specialised projects for the welcome and support of people bearing specific vulnerabilities: disabled people or people with health problems (physical and mental), unaccompanied minors, torture victims, single-parent households, single pregnant women.
According to a welcoming approach that envisages the complete openness of the Sprar projects to their localities and to collaborative work, initiatives for informing the local communities and spreading understanding of facts about the right to asylum and the condition of those seeking it or under its international protection are promoted.
It is from this perspective of the scope of the cinematographic festival MyArt that in its first year we institute the Sprar Award for the Best Documentary. The Award, equal to € 3,500, will be awarded by a national representative of Sprar during the final evening of the festival.
The Migrantes Foundation is an organisation formed by the Conferenza Episcopale Italiana to provide religious aid to migrants, Italian and foreign, to promote attitudes and initiatives of brotherly welcome in Christian communities as regards these people, to stimulate, in their civil communities, the understanding and valuing of migrant identities and a setting of peaceful cohabitation, respectful of the rights of human beings.
In this sense the Foundation Migrantes favours the religious life of migrants, offering the sacred and cult methods necessary for their free integration into local Churches; co-ordinates the initiatives, in favour of migration, promoted by local Churches and by organisations of Christian outlook; promotes the personal growth of migrants so that, with respect to and in development of their cultural and religious values, they can be protagonists in the civil societies of which they form a part; finally takes care that the public is adequately informed there is adequate information in the sphere of public opinion beyond stimulating the elaboration of the laws protecting migrants, entitling them to a more just and peaceful way of life.
Finally, the Migrantes is involved in recording the positive values of migration, to support welcoming attitudes and active co-living alongside the autochthonous society.
Therefore for the first edition of the cinematographic festival MyArt, the Foundation Migrantes has agreed to establish one monetary prize: the Best Short Feature Film prize of €1,500.00. The prize will be awarded by a representative of the Foundation Migrantes, during the final evening of the festival.