There is a place hidden in the green hills of Umbria where time flows slower, the stories intertwine, and the silence of isolated houses leaves room for the slight noise of laughter and memories. It is Casa Bice, in the heart of Massa Martana, a small town in the province of Perugia, where every week young and old people find themselves for Share afternoons of friendship, manual skills and memory. A social experiment as simple as it is powerful, which combines generations and fights loneliness, especially in the internal areas of the country where aging often lives in silence, within walls that know of memories but more and more rarely of presence.
Since November 2023, thanks to the Social Cooperative Pepita Onlus, Casa Bice has come to life. “It is a special place – says Ivano Zoppi, president of Pepita -. Here, every Monday and Thursday, a minibus crosses the villages of the Martani hills, collects the elderly ladies and brings them to the Bice house. They are all women, some have known each other for years, others meet here for the first time, but after a few minutes the distance cancels: we laugh, we speak, work together ».
Photo by Luca Cereda © Casa Bice outside with the elderly ladies and the boys of the speakers of the area. To the right of the group, Ivano Zoppi, president of Pepita Onlus
This house is not any elderly center. Brings with it the history and desire to Beatrice Bratti, known by everyone as Bice, a very loved teacher of the country, who having no heirs decided to leave his home to the Municipality with a precise bond: who became a point of reference for over 65 and for people with disabilities, a meeting and reception place, open to the community.
A project that required years of bureaucratic waiting before being able to blossom, but which today is reality. “Every week we organize creative workshops, small artisan activities, we cook together, we read books and from the pages the starting point for the comparison, the anecdotes, the questions: the memories of the war lived between the hardship and the resistance, the first loves, the traditions of the past,” explains Zoppi. The goal is twofold: “On the one hand we help people to age, remaining an active part of society, on the other we avoid losing the human and cultural heritage that these women represent».
This is not a welfare service, but a real intergenerational life laboratory. The boys of the speakers of Todi, Spoleto and the neighboring municipalities regularly participate in the “Afternoons together with Casa Bice”, bringing enthusiasm and freshness. “The activities are concrete: together with the elderly we decorate the house for Christmas, we build objects with recycled materials, prepare sweets or do small maintenanceZoppi says. But it is in the informal moments that magic is accomplished: “Talking about Valentine’s Day, for example, and finding out how love was lived once and how young people live today, is an exchange that enriches everyone”.
This is testified by the videos made by Christian family At Casa Bice, including the comparison on the day of lovers and that on the meaning of Christmas, where the words of the elderly mix with the dreams and questions of the boys. It is a humanity that is recognized and listened to, in a context in which generational distances seem to cancel.
Casa Bice is also a small garden of relationships. The plants that decorate the outdoor spaces are brought directly by the elderly by their balconies and vegetable gardens. The desserts served during the afternoons are hand -prepared by the participants, according to recipes handed down from mother to daughter. “This house has become a family. For many it is the first reason to leave the house after the loss of her husband or after years of isolation »observes Zoppi. Some of them, before Bice’s house, could not even cross the house threshold for depression. “Now they wait with joy those two afternoons: they feel part of something again.”
Still, the future of the project is uncertain. «For years Pepita has supported the project with its personal format and also provides a means of free transport that accompanies and brings home the ladies from the center. The cooperative supports the project, but for a year the Municipality has no longer been able to support us in any way and without new economic resources we will not be able to go on for a long time »warns lame. The center works thanks to the work of the educators of Pepita and the volunteers, but is totally self-sustained. Because of this The cooperative has launched a fundraising campaign, both by bank transfer and online, to guarantee continuity to the activities (information on www.pepita.it/casa-bice/).
«We are not just offering a pastime – concludes Zoppi – but We are recruiting social ties that risk shaking. In these small villages, when you lose sociability, you lose a piece of community. And every smile found in here is a conquest for everyone ».
