The project

// Intro

With more than 65 millions of people on the run today, the global refugee crisis is posing one of the greatest humanitarian challenges of our times.

Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URMs) arriving in Europe represent a substantial proportion of the great Mediterranean migration.  Only in 2016, 20.000  kids arrived on the Sicilian shore.

Children, travelling alone on the world’s most dangerous migration route, cross six thousand miles of desert and sea to reach Europe.

A smartphone is all they carry, the only link to what is left behind and what lies ahead.

// Accoglierete

‘Accoglierete’ is non-profit organization based in Syracuse (Sicily), that provides the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors with the full range of assistance, care and services available by promoting the role of the LEGAL GUARDIANSHIP.

Thanks to the ‘Accoglierete’, we have met the URMs together with their legal guardians and invited them to take part in our workshop idea .

After few meetings of getting to know each other and the project presentation, a group of young refugees, interested into participating in the workshop of film-making and video literacy, was outlined.

// The Beginning of the Workshop

The workshop started on the 8th February 2017
We meet twice a month, for 8 months.

The goal of the workshop, which involves directors, sound-operators, photography directors and authors, is to turn the kids’ smartphone into a storytelling and documentary tool so they can use it with a deeper and conscious approach.

Through the class discussions and the analysis of their videos the kids are stimulated to share their present life and to choose what to narrate: the reception centre where they live, the night school and the internship they attend, the football matches, the dancing, the swimming pool, the long wait of a bus that never arrives, their dreams, their sadness, their legal problems, etc.

// A Documentary to Recount an Integration Path

All the videos that the kids shoot during the workshop will be edited, with the supervision of the director Andrea Caccia, in a documentary that will be released through different platforms.

// Scholarly Research and Dissemination of Good Practices

A psychological research over the effect of the video workshop and a comparative study about URM Legal guardianship in Europe will be released over meetings and roundtables during 2018.