Palermo - Tartaruga

OCTOBER 2015

by Eleonora Drago

For Project Week 2015, I volunteered in an assisted living centre house hosting abused women and their children in my city, Palermo. The house is called “Tartaruga” and is run by the organization 3P.

I had already been there last summer, so I decided to use the opportunity given by the school to go on a Project Week in order to work again in this centre. This time I enjoyed this experience even more, seeing as I already knew the other people working there. Some of the guests in the centre were the same, while some were new. Nevertheless, it was not difficult to get to know the new mothers and children thanks to the full programme of activities I helped run. We engaged the children in both outdoor and indoor activities and we tried to involve the mothers as much as possible, in order to give them the opportunity to spend quality time with their kids.



Since the centre is in a big house with a garden, we did all the outdoor activities there. These consisted of sports, such as volleyball, Frisbee and badminton, as well as games involving running or throwing a ball. The aim was to teach the children the importance of an active and healthy life and, at the same time, it gave them the opportunity to get rid of the tension they might have accumulated, preventing it to be manifested through violent behaviours.

My favourite activity outside, however, was the creation of a vegetable garden. This was connected to the theme of the week, which was food education and nutrition. The children and their mothers first chose what kind of vegetables they wanted to have in the garden. Then, we went to buy the seeds and we planted them. Finally, we painted some wooden signs to remember where each type of vegetable was planted. This was the activity I liked the most because of the enthusiasm that I saw in everyone. One of the mothers was particularly passionate about gardening, so she took the role of leader teaching us how to plant the seeds in the best way and guiding us throughout the entire creation of the vegetable garden. This activity is also one, the effect of which will be long lasting, since it will teach the children important skills, such as patience, responsibility, care and respect for nature.



 

Alongside the outdoor activities, we also run many indoor activities, aimed to teach the children new things and develop their thinking and creative skills. Since the theme of the week was food education, we taught the children about the food pyramid and about what to eat and how often to eat it in order to have a healthy diet. The concepts learnt were then applied through games and interactive activities. For instance, children and their mothers were divided into two teams. Each team had to cut images of the different food groups in the food pyramid (e.g. fruit and vegetables, cheese and meat) from magazines and newspapers. Once they had enough, each member of the two teams had to run in turns and place one of the food they had cut into the correct level of the food pyramid. The fastest team to stick all their foods in the correct place on the food pyramid, won. Other activities involved painting, making collages with different materials, dancing, singing, as well as playing board games and watch cartoons.

This experience has definitely benefited me in many ways and allowed me to achieve some of the PW learning goals, such as providing a service to an organization/community, organizing activities outside the campus,  applying and improving the knowledge and skills from lessons and CAS, getting to know more about myself, achieving a positive social change and learning new skills. I learnt many new skills in terms of how to work with children, especially those who experienced violence and abuse. Talking with the mothers, I learnt about many different realities different from mine. I heard stories of violence and domestic abuse and I understood how hard it is to recover after such horrible experiences. Nevertheless, I also met very strong women who had the courage to ask for help and stop that violence for both themselves and their children.



The way these people live together also reminded me of our school. Like us, they have to respect rules, accept other people’s diversity, share their spaces and live together in a very diverse environment. The diversity of the people in the house particularly stroke me. There were women who migrated from other countries as well as locals, women coming from poor social classes and middle-class women. Differently from what I thought, domestic violence is a phenomenon that is present in all social classes and cultural backgrounds. It is something that leaves you a mark for the rest of your life. The aim of “Casa Tartaruga”, therefore, is not to make the mothers and children forget about what happened to them, as this is impossible. Instead, the volunteers try to help them live with their experience and try to overcome it in order to build a new, happier life.

I am proud I gave them a little help in achieving this goal and I hope I will have the opportunity of volunteering in this centre again.