Women's health and Coumminty Center's Role in Accessing Information: the case of Center"Casa di Ramia" in Italy

Casa di Ramia ( House of Ramia) is a Women's Public Community Centre. It is base din Verona the region of Veneto in  Italy. The Centre is under direct supervision of the Department for Equal Opportunities of the commune of Verona. The administrators are 2 public social workers. It was opened in the '90 with the intention to create a space for women of different ethnic ,religious,cultural and political background to have a chance to interact. The space CasadiRamia Its main focus has always been to provide the chance to the organisations NGOs informal groups and individuals  wanting to engage with the community can use the space as a hub and co-working place. It has been a place of Empowerment, Education and Dialogue on diverse topics. Talking to the administrator social worker : The place is exclusively for women with the intention to create a safe for women environment. According to the administrator this has allowed the Centre to be known in Verona's  most migrant women as the perfect place to go and participate in activities for women of diverse religions that would be otherwise not comfortable for women to interact with men outside the family. The women that often are present at the centre are Muslim women of North Africa, Nigerian women, East European women and Italian women as well. One of the basic rules is that there is no religious prejudice and all are welcome. IT is also child friendly space. It was well thought as this in fact permits women to bring also their children and interact in the centre with women of other cultures faith and languages as best as they can. The CasadiRamia has a public small library computers and a class room for courses. The courses  given are all for free. some of the courses are lessons of Italian, French, English and Arabic. Among the most important are the Storytelling Project. This a crucial moment,led by a published writer,  the women share their stories of motherhood, trauma of rape, trauma of domestic abuse, as well as racism and access to basic needs in Italy. Often this stories are a hint for the social worker and operators  of association to organise classes on different topics: sexual education  STD,reproductive health care in  Verona, FGM, basic computer skills, legal information on Child rights, Public health care and social welfare access. All these courses are also available at the Public health centre but rarely do the health workers interact with the Community Centres like CasadiRamia and this is in fact weakness due to lack of resources . Many cases of health issues related to violence and reported by the women to the social workers and NGO operators are immediately refereed to the Departments for Equal Opportunities for further referral to adequate services. The Public departments are starting to acknowledge these specific needs and are mapping their services and create network that can be also easily accessible to women that are not Italian, and that rarely speak Italian well before 2 or 3 years. Talking to the women receiving the service: the general response was positive and all replied wishing similar places Community centre existed in different ares of the city too. Many are happy casa that Ramia exists. They wouldn't know where else to spend their time  learning In fact many women come for distant areas just to be able to interact with other women. They feel encouraged to do activities of peer to peer training. Most of the training provided, such as cooking , sewing, computer course and language course it is of course informal education and often no valid certification can be provided for them these women that can be spendable for work. Many of the women that are coming to casadiRamia are unemployed. Sometimes they come seeking for work. Many women say that they are grateful to the safety Italy provides them but now they would like to have intensive  Italian language training so they can read and have access to all the public services themselves without support.

Trough the years I had different occasion to interact with that Community Centre.  I believe "CasadiRamia" has been a pilot project and a mode to imitate for many other neighbour cities, but often failed as they encountered difficulty in having public  government funds. There is a somewhat conservative and right wing politics in Veneto. Thus it impacts not only the immigrant women's inclusion into society trough Gender based research has been done by various university students, including myself, interviewing women on their perception of CasadiRamia.
CasadiRamia 's administrator compiles monthly report to the Department on the activities and the needs of the Community Center and asks for budgeting but often the public funds are not available for all the course is mentioned to be carried out by paid professional or companies thus the certificate Can be used to access the work market. This Community Centre  has been a place of knowledge and possibilities and voice for women, and often tries to address problems and issues that should be the government's public responsibility. The Operators that interact with the women in CasadiRamia often lobby for improvement. There should be better financing and training for the volunteers. Recently the situation has improved. The new politicians in power have supported the opening of similar women's co-working places in the city.
There is still a long away to go. The Conservative mentality needs to change and the Italian  society has been struggling with a growing number of migrants this , added to the fact the Italian economy isn't at its best, doe not help the general sentiment but