Webinar “At a crossroads. Unaccompanied and separated children in their transition to adulthood in Italy”

05 December 2018 Naro, Sicily, Italy Stefano De Luigi, VII Photo Omar (17), left, plays football with his housemate Youssouf (17) at a piazza in the small village of Naro, in Sicily, Italy. Omar migrated from Senegal and has been in Italy for about a year. He had extreme difficulties with his family, who forced him to drop out of school to work, and decided to leave Senegal for good. Omar was transferred four months earlier (August 2018), without a choice, to this very small village. Twenty years ago (1998), the village – which is about an hour inland off the southern coast of Sicily – had nearly 20,000 inhabitants. But many young people moved to the cities and now, there’s only 7,500 people living there. That now includes Omar and 20 other migrant boys who live at this reception centre. Already, the group has a familial bond. Omar made the request for a residency permit about a month ago. Without papers, he can’t do much. He goes to school and participates in UNICEF’s UPSHIFT progamme, a course for migrants, refugees and local Italians. In these sessions, students discuss issues that affect their everyday life and work together to find innovative solutions that address them. Carried out with UNICEF’s implementing partner JA Italia, the UPSHIFT programme promotes social integration for young migrants and refugees, with the larger aim to create long-lasting social impact. The pilot programme launched in October 2018 in minors in the 3 Sicilian provinces of Palermo, Agrigento and Catania, and have engaged more than 1,000 adolescents in total. “Here, where it’s calm and tranquil, I can live,” Omar says. “I was really sad when I learned that the people here don’t really do much. We hope that, with the help of UNICEF’s [UPSHIFT] project, Naro will come back to life.”