Confini (“Borders”)

The program is composed by four parts. All the students, first, meet in class one migrant and read about his story, and how and why he left his country to emigrate to Italy. The meeting in class lasts for two hours, whereas they are given the book telling the story of the refugee roughly three weeks before the meeting. During the meeting, students have the possibility to ask questions about his story, his country, and his values. Secondly, a teacher from Sophia informs the students about the numbers and figures on migration referred to the country where the program is implemented (in 2020, Italy and Senegal), and in the world. In particular, in a two-hour session, he provides them with notions about how many people emigrate in the world, the origin countries from which the majority of migrants leave, the main reasons, and the main destination countries, and expenditure and revenues deriving from immigrant residents in Italy. After this lecture, Sophia provides students with support to elaborate a project work based on their changes in the perception of immigration. The project work might be (but is not limited to) videos, photos, poems, songs, namely students with their imagination transform the contents received from the program. Finally, Sophia organizes a public event where students present their project works to other students, teachers, politicians, and workers involved in the non-profit sector. To monitor the impact of the Confini program, Sophia administers baseline and endline quali-quantitative questionnaires to students and interviews teachers after the program implementation. A team composed by four workers is totally dedicated to the program implementation (two migrants, one teacher on the migration topic, and one worker involved in the administrative part of the program).