Save The Children: children are asking for “adequate spaces” in which to grow up

“Here I live and I would like to feel free to go out in my neighborhood without being afraid.” A large cage illuminated by a yellowish light and buildings around it. Inside the cage is a little girl. It is one of the images created by Save The Children, thanks to artificial intelligence and with the collaboration of the agency the Lateral Creative Hub agency to launch the awareness campaign** Here I live,** with a petition to ensure quality education, sporting activities, opportunities and safe spaces to grow and a long-term program of innovation
social life of the urban suburbs, Here, a neighborhood to grow. Cobstructed and created together with the public, social and private realities of the territory, at the start of Turin, Prato, Rome, Naples and Palermo.

The initiative was born with the creation of the report «Making Room for Growth», which focuses on economic and educational inequalities within the 14 metropolitan cities, where the presence of boys, girls and adolescents is greater. The data that emerges is this: of the 10 million and 493 thousand children and adolescents between 0 and 19 years old who live in our country, well 3 million 785 thousand, almost 2 out of 5, are concentrated in the 14 metropolitan cities and mostly in disadvantaged neighborhoods lacking space, stimuli and opportunities to grow. Out of 114 municipalities in the main municipalities, 33 have higher disadvantage factors. In the same areas, 240 educational institutions are at risk of “downsizing”.

«The urban suburbs today are the true cities of children because that is where most of them live, but they often do not offer adequate spaces, stimuli and opportunities for growth, instead fueling isolation and marginality”, he explains Daniela Fatarella, general director of Save the Children. «In our work in these contexts, we often find ourselves in dialogue with
girls and boys full of resources and talent, who feel betrayed by adults, as if degradation and deprivation were the only response we are capable of towards their needs. For this reason, with the campaign **I live here **and the social innovation program we are aiming for
positively enhance the participation and protagonism of girls, boys and adolescents. They are the best resource for the regeneration and future of the places they inhabit.”

In metropolitan cities, i.e. the main municipality and its hinterland, 13.7% of taxpayers live with income less than 15 thousand euros per year. From North to South. In these contexts there is also a greater lack of adequate spaces for the growth of the little ones. Two out of five minors live in an overcrowded home and among families with at least one minor child there are those who live in damaged houses (9.2%), with humidity (13.7%) or poor lighting (5.4%). Among the almost
13 thousand minors who are homeless or homeless, two out of three are concentrated in metropolitan cities, where 45% of all eviction orders are recorded.

«We started from five territories distributed geographically from north to south in the country, characterized by a significant concentration of resident minors, including those of foreign origin, and by conditions of deprivation that concern them closely», he continues Daniela Fatarella. «These are neighborhoods where Save the Children has long started collaboration paths with local public and private entities in projects for combating school dropout and educational poverty, and for ”the inclusion of minors with a migratory background, and where we are now proposing a shared and plural plan, with a long-term perspective, which can truly generate structural and sustainable changes for all children and young people who live in these neighborhoods».