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The hint for this title was given us by an article in the local paper Zoom24, reporting news about part of a building collapsed because of a guilty disregard in the downtown, an ancient Monastery. The journalist, focused on this historical complex, describing a “city in decadence”, abandoned to its own destiny by an uncaring ruling class. He also wrote about a Project of about 4 million euros “sitting in a drawer” whose aim was to transform this monumental building in a Museum Centre. It was Jan. 2018 and he meant to spark off a debate in the media.
Four years later something had happened… that Project has been nearly completed but this site is still unused.
This is exactly what we’ve decided to work on… what we mean to do, thanks to ASOC, is not just to monitor a EU project, our aim is to spark off a debate in the City and to make our proposal about the best use for this amazing historical building.
We got to know about this Project through our English teacher, Donatella Bruni. On the first days of school, she told us about “A Scuola of OpenCoesione” and we immediately thought it would have been an interesting experience, worth doing. Our teacher gave us two choices: we could have done it either in Italian or in English.
We attend the 4th class of Capialbi High-school, foreign languages course, so we obviously decided to choose the English one in order to improve and challenge ourselves to something different.At first we went on the website of OpenCoesione to choose the project which we wanted to monitor and we found so many different projects about various topics, that we got a little bit confused. We are 16 strong personalities and each of us had a different idea about what to choose. Of course, we had to choose one! So we started, limiting our research to the territory near our school which is in Vibo Valentia. At first we focused on the several themes financed by European Funds, thinking about Social Inclusion, which we care a lot about or Employment in the South, a very weak spot. However, few projects had been done or completed in our area.
Then a question arose among us! What’s the peculiarity of our territory?
"Elementary, my dear Watson!" Vibo and its famous touristic coast.
We kept on searching in the theme of Culture and Tourism to find a project that was suitable and inspirational for everyone in the class.We eventually chose “Ristrutturazione dell'ex Convento dei Padri Minori Osservanti, già Caserma Garibaldi, da destinare a Palazzo dei Musei”, which deals with the restoration of an ancient building founded in 1521 which once was a monastery. It was later transformed into a military base in 1878 and named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, later it was also used as a local school. Now meant to become a Museum Palace, thanks to the funding of about four million euros.This building is very spacious and located in the downtown area but it was never used properly. As soon as we found it, we decided it was the right one! We do believe that enhancing Art and Culture in our territory makes the difference! Speaking of which, we’ve chosen “THE VALUE OF ART” as a name for the Team, to highlight the importance of Art in Vibo Valentia, which has been seriously underestimated for too long.
It was now the time to find a role for each of us, that was a very easy job! It has been natural that each one would have done what was suitable for him/her. Chiara, the boss would have been the PROJECT MANAGER, helped by Martina, sweet but persevering, the perfect HEAD OF RESEARCH. Viktoria, Veronica and Marina, all brilliant with graphics and drawing, were perfect for being our DESIGNERS. Maddalena, Mariagrazia, Antonio and Alessandra, very good at posting and editing on social media, were suitable for being our SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS. The ones good with Maths and calculations are Polina and Immacolata, they would have been our ANALYST and CODER. The hardworking Sara F., Sara M. and Samantha were perfect to be our BLOGGERS, and the last but not the least, us, Marilena and Sara S, we both really like writing and describing things, we were the best STORYTELLERS ever!
No one could have stopped us… we were now ready to start!
The Designers created a logo for the Team, meant to deal with the project and our name. The main element of the final one they developed, is an old and damaged wall which symbolises the way in which our city has been represented until today and also the fact that the building was nearly abandoned and ruined before the Project had started.At the center of the wall you can find an elaborated and illuminated frame with the Team’s name in the middle.The frame represents our involvement in monitoring the chosen project, making an effort to give more value to our beautiful town.The analyst and coder had already began looking for information and data about the restoration of the former Military Base. They found out that the 2014-2020 EU Structural Funds were used for the Programming area.The Entities involved were Regione Calabria, as Planning Body and Comune di Vibo Valentia, as Implementing Body and Beneficiary.The type of investment is Infrastructure (Recupero) and the theme Culture and Tourism.The Expected starting date was November 20th 2018 and it effectively started that day. The expected ending date was December 31st 2020 but the State of Progress is still “OPEN”, in other words NOT COMPLETED yet!The project may have been slowed down and/or stopped because of various pre-existing problems and because of the Pandemic.From the amount of money that was expected, 3.762969,19 euros, 90%(3.388.623,18€) has been paid and the project is still ongoing. The payments started in 2017- two years after the planned starting date with 3% in 2018, 30% was paid. The next year they reached about 60%, 80% in 2020 and 90% this year.Of all the money that was paid, 75% comes from the European Union, 17% comes from the Region and the last 8% comes from the Revolving Fund.
