"We want to hear about 'Immigration, Education, and Identity'..."

Ah...yet another wonderfully, long and exhausting day. Today, we started our morning with a visit to the Rome office of the International Organization for Migration, which I learned from Jamie has four offices in the United States. Sadly, I had never heard of it before...

We talked with two great individuals from the IOM, who shared about what the IOM does and specifically how education fits into its aims.

It was a fascinating discussion, and I have to say it was extremely encouraging to hear about the work that IOM is doing to help increase dialogue between teachers, parents, and students from all different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. This morning's discussion built upon our discussion with Leonardo Carocci about "social mediation" except that today focused specifically on "cultural mediation."

Rossella, who shockingly is the only one at IOM who specifically focuses on education in a migration context (the IOM mainly focuses on labor markets, trafficking, etc.), shared with us about the approaches IOM takes to helping build bridges of understanding among immigrant families and Italian families in the school community. We watched a neat video that showed Rossella leading a roundtable of teachers in sharing their own migration stories, even as ethnic Italians. The results of these dialogues between the school communities helped the children and their families connect with one another better on a cultural and collective level.

After a lunch break (I cooked pasta at my apartment!), we headed out with our class again for the Di Donato School, one of the largest and most diverse schools in Rome. We had a discussion with some parents who had formed the Parent Association at Di Donato. They are extremely involved in helping to foster a more supportive community for their children, and all of them came very different places--from Iran to the Phillipines, from Somalia to Italy. We'll be heading back to that school in the next two weeks to meet with the teachers and also talk to some students. Should be exciting!

Our final part of the day was back at the Rome Center for a documentary film showing on immigration in Rome. It was called "The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio" and featured a local effort, amidst intense debate about the state of immigrants in Italy, to show the Italian general public that Italy draws much of its strength from its immigrant population. Director Agostino Ferrente documented his efforts along with an extremely talented musician, Mario Tronco, to recruit an orchestra of international musicians from Rome's diverse Piazza Vittorio neighborhood.

The documentary followed their several years long challenges and difficulties to find and recruit musicians who would be willing to join them despite having little funding. It was an inspiring and engaging movie that showed the positive impact of creating a common bond between people from diverse walks of life. The musicians in the film came from all over the globe--Senegal, Argentina, Morocco, Ecuador, Italy, Cuba, India, USA. The room was extremely hot and dark though, and combined with the shaky cinematography of a documentary, left me feeling dizzy, nauseous, and feverish. I think the little sleep I've gotten this week had something to do with that too, but I ended up having to put my head down in my hands for about a good 15 minutes.

By the time I lifted my head again, the movie was pretty much over. It was a fantastic film though. We were lucky to have the director come talk with us and answer our questions after the film, so that was interesting to hear. I even got a picture with him during the snack time!

Tomorrow, we're heading out early to St. George's English School (Manka's old school), which should be a great opportunity. I'm looking forward to visiting another school and hopefully talk with some students. Then we'll have a short discussion in the afternoon before we get an afternoon break. Manka's organizing a group dinner tomorrow night at one of her favorite restaurants, so it should be fun. We don't have class on Friday, so I'm hoping to visit Naples, Pompeii, and Mt. Vesuvius on Friday, Villa d'Este and Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli on Saturday, and the Catacombs, the Baths of Caracalla, and the Borghese Gallery on Sunday. Most of our group is going to Barcelona this weekend, but there's still much to check out here in Rome that I'm definitely going to be staying around for the rest of the month.

Finally, I promised some pictures from our discussion with Angela Oriti at "Save the Children" with the boat graveyards and holding centers for newly arrived immigrants. Our program director forwarded us a link to some pictures from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/jul/04/2?picture=335643309. Here are a few that jumped out at me...

It's incredible what you learn through pictures...I'd like to travel south to see some of these places for myself. I'm not sure how much of it I'll see just going to Naples and Pompeii. In any case, I'm exhausted again, and I should head to bed soon.

Until next time,
Sam

P.S. I'm proud of myself for cooking at home today and only spending one Euro and fifty cents...on a single cone with three flavors of gelato. =]