Ceramic Tile Towel Bars

Everyone wants the asylum of blacks


Torino, dozens of Italians on the waiting list to enroll their children in the neighborhood of multi-ethnic

Emanuela Minucci ( La Stampa )

TURIN - In the nineties was "the 'asylum of blacks, "where no one Italian parent wanted to enroll their child nursery Bay of Turin, San Salvario district, the most multi-ethnic of the city, fifteen years ago persuaded the residents to take to the streets armed with iron bars, to defend against "the bastards of immigrants."

Well, today those same classes with a high rate of almond eyes and black skin (the 60per cent of children and foreigners) have become a status symbol for Italians. The small nursery in the Nineties that the City asked for help to fund special projects that can mitigate the conflicts that precede integration, some days he does not know how to deal with incoming requests from parents plus Italians who live in other districts: "We have 62 places and a waiting list of 75 others with questions coming from all parts of the city," explains the Director of Education Marilyn Marcellino.

The manager added with a smile: "Evidently now they are in many multi-ethnicity to have understood that, if treated as an added value, is paying off." One of these results is the friendship that binds Melody Andrew, the same smile in the photo asylum Bay customize their mini-wardrobe. The nursery is a few steps from Porta Nuova train station, crossroads of the store yesterday, now cool neighborhood of local trendsetters.

Melody has five years and comes from the Ivory Coast, Andrea, his contemporary, coming from an apartment in the center. They are already so friends who were just able to write their names were sent a postcard from the sea. And their parents have begun dating. The link between the two small companions for asylum is a symbol of something that in ten years has turned upside down. In the late nineties were fleeing from the people of Turin and San Salvario rents plunged. Today parents live in chic neighborhoods like the spreader (with the nursery still little mixed) will bring patiently waiting list to enroll their children in kindergarten Bay, where integration becomes collective growth.

And so, yesterday, the Department of Education of the City of Turin has found himself in his hands a statistical revolution. "These data show - says councilor Joseph Burgundy - that in this school have succeeded in transforming the high level of foreign opportunities. And the parents if they remember. So, thanks to a powerful word of mouth, to that asylum now wants to join a little 'all'. He adds: "A great result against whom (the Members of the AN, ed), just last year he preached the necessity of the limited number of foreigners."

And a great result especially considering that only last year, for a district such as Porta Palazzo (where the rate of non-Italian in some schools has reached 100 per cent) always had launched the City of Turin ' Alarm: parents left the neighborhood because they wanted to enroll their children in schools where the Italians were the new minority.

Now, San Salvario tendency is precisely the opposite. And the surge of requests for inclusion are very proud of the Director of Education, Marica Marcellino: "I believe that our school - walking in the yard clear multicolor asylum - has earned such recognition because here we were able to implement projects truly unique, for example, through the "flying carpet", fielded with the help of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rivoli, which uses art as a means of universal communication that unites the diversity enhancing the added value of these differences. " Also asylum Bay have experienced many other projects, such as "White Day, the color that will cancel all the other colors' festive path that starts from the transformation of space (the walls are stained, the children sew on white paper) and ends with a white food: rice cake, cookies covered with powdered sugar, meringue, Arabic bread.

"Look, this is our school - the director claims - we have transformed the differences in value added, we believe that a class that speaks multiple languages \u200b\u200blead to an enrichment, not an obstacle. And people in ten years he has understood the message. "

Torino is not new to be talked about in Chapter multiethnic school. Last year at a school in Porta Palazzo debuted a class roster that was better than the poster-cult of Benetton. A student with almond eyes, the other can not be more fair: United Colors of School, in fact. There, just steps from the Mole, had beaten the record of integration between banks: fifteen to zero, the middle world. Now the foreigners play their first home game.