Hunger has already entered our homes

There is a trail behind the virus. A trail that enters every home but doesn’t all affect the same way. For some it is the luxury of boredom to be sliced ​​in the last cake, for others it is the piece of bread left over because there is no more money to buy a fresh one. In Italy 1 million and 260 thousand children live in a state of absolute poverty. They have tripled in the past 10 years. They are in Palermo but also in Milan. Parents usually work. Now they have also lost what little they managed to collect and in many cases they do not have access to state aid. They are children who often have school meals as their only meal. Children who have education as their only hope of redemption, the only alternative to the street. We are in Italy, not in Africa. Here where (OECD data) that 14% of the population living in a situation of poverty is likely to become 27% if they lose their salary for three consecutive months. «Families in great difficulty now in dramatic difficulty», says Ivano Abbruzzi, general manager of the Tree of Life, a foundation that since 2008 takes parents by the hand before the boys to create paths of escape from poverty. But today the urgency is different for them. Food, first of all. And education. «The global epidemic risks carrying a social emergency. The risk is the estate and social security of entire neighborhoods with families who have no food, who live on the margins of society, do not have the legal requirements to have state benefits. Already fragile people left without work, maybe 5 or 6 in a 50 square meter house without users. Suddenly without income, forced to live together »in a sum of poverty (not least cultural ones) where a theme is also that of domestic violence. The association follows about 600 families now with whatsapp groups and remote interviews. Objective: not to get certain situations to exasperation. They distributed a 50 euro shopping voucher, for example. And a hundred tablets with related connections to keep the kids hooked to their schools. At home they have no parents who can follow them, homework arrives and is sent back with the only mobile phone available in the family. «The minister launched the initiatives for digital teaching but they risk having long times. Vodafone for example gave us 250 tablets, Amazon 200 others. We need to involve large retailers and the third sector. Create a circuit for everyone to eat today. Shopping vouchers for example. The social emergency is just as important as the health emergency. The government must also take care of this. “