Twenty years of history and stories inside and outside the Casa al sole, twenty years that tell that “children with cognitive disabilities have no special needs, they have normal needs” and want to become adults, with their autonomy. The words are those that, in the short film “On the way home”, signed by Marco Rossitti, contain the profound meaning of a social project capable of uniting institutions, families and communities, creating school.
The 20th anniversary of the Casa al sole was celebrated at the Student House by the Down Fvg Foundation, together with the protagonists – tenants and educators – and families. For the occasion, the 18-minute video was shown, which follows that of 2011 (“Up Down” which even reached the UN) with a promise: “With the footage, about thirty hours – assured Rossitti, with his collaborators -, we will make a real film ». Appointment in a year.
In the first three years the children enter the “mother house” and learn the honors and burdens of independent life: cleaning, cooking, managing their finances, living the places of the city, always under the supervision of educators. Then the passage in one of the satellite houses (already six and a new one is being prepared in Viale Trento) where almost total autonomy is achieved “because none of us are completely autonomous” says the president of the Foundation, Sandro Morassut.
“This project is real life, we work with people, we are not in a classroom in a laboratory, but we are by their side in real life” says Cinzia Paolin, coordinator of the educators, in the film. Knowing how to do becomes a way of “knowing how to be”, discovering who you are, how you want to live your life. A goal that emerged with strength and emotion from the children’s story, in the film and also in the cinema, and to which Rossitti gave the key to “living” «understood not as using a place, but living it fully. Their home is also Pordenone and around them they have a common home that is nature: so we have given space to their relationship with the environment that surrounds them. My collaborators and I tiptoed into their homes, into their lives, following a few moments. The boys, who have become adults in the meantime – some have even married – teach us to live the city in a different way, with their own rhythms they build their city ». There is a solid network behind the project, as the councilor for social policies Guglielmina Cucci also remarked, who also anticipated the commitment of the Sector, in the Pnrr, to build new housing solutions, online. A network that in this experience has seen the Asfo and the Friuli Foundation in the forefront, which also promotes the welfare ban, like families (who find an important answer after us), educators and a precious group of volunteers.