The YALLA Project- Social Community Services

The project aims at promoting new governance models for the social assistance services as well as new ways of reception and empowerment services for foreign people and groups particularly those who are most at risk of social marginalization. In particular, the project aims at:

• Improving the organization of the Area Social Plan services with new operational tools and support procedures (e.g. participatory project management);
• Creating a local network of public and private entities able to provide social assistance services to Third Country Nationals, in particular vulnerable targets;
• Promoting the strengthening of intercultural skills of service operators;
• Piloting new models of social inclusion to fight early school leaving and housing problems;
• Raising awareness among local community members about integration and human rights.

The foreign population in the metropolitan city of Naples is heterogeneous and dynamic resulting from the intertwining of old and new migratory flows. The increasing numbers of asylum seekers and refugees, including families, women and children, pose new social, cultural, political and organizational challenges in terms of migration management and integration. In particular, people leaving the reception system face significant challenges such as access to study, housing and employment, in a context characterized by a high share of informal economy and prevalence of educational poverty.

In addition, the transformation of the SPRAR system into SIPROIMI with a limited access for refugees has increased the number of people excluded from reception and integration services, increasing their risk of social exclusion. The services targeted to migrants are fragmented and disconnected; there is neither an overall governance of the interventions put in place by the Municipality nor an integrated inter-institutional network capable of overcoming gaps or avoid overlapping.