Equality as the basis of substantial, concrete democracy, in which everyone can have access to rights and opportunities. And in this, young people are great allies. The project certifies it “For a society without inequalities”whose final balance preceded in Rome, in the spaces of the river industries, the XXXII edition of the International Volunteering Award of Focsiv, the Federation of international volunteer organizations of Christian inspiration.
“For a society without inequalities” was aimed at young people from North to South in our country, “still crossed by strong disparities, triggered by economic, cultural, social, gender, racial dynamics”, underlines the Focsiv contact person for the project, Primo Di Blasio.
Lasting 18 months, the intervention included workshops and activities with students from primary and secondary schools and youth groups, for a total of over 400 children involved and made aware of the issues of inequalities and how to try to overcome them. “The young people amazed us” continues Di Blasio. “They mentioned inequalities that we hadn’t thought about, such as the issue of bullying. They must be accompanied and supported. We must believe in them.” He confirms it Chiara Fusari, of the non-profit organization Movimento Shalom, leader of the project created in collaboration with Caritas and many associations rooted in the territories. Fusari describes the after-school program held with children and adolescents in a municipality in Tuscany, “heterogeneous in terms of age and socio-economic contexts of origin”. Through games and activities “everyone was encouraged to share daily experiences to bring out their needs”.
Among the initiatives there is also a sort of “human game of goose”: “There are those who remain stuck in their own box while seeing others advance”, explains the representative of the Shalom Movement. “But to move you need collaboration, and this is how abstract concepts are translated into practical understanding.” Outside the classroom, then, “the students organized a collective shopping to donate to the Caritas emporium”, where they encountered “the needs and faces of the people who frequent it”.
The centrality of young people as a driver of change also emerges in the choice of the winner of the award “Shots against inequalities” 2025, conferred to Deianira Bedini. Twenty years old, originally from Pisa, where she attends the faculty of Psychology, Bedini has portrayed seven people sitting on colored chairs while looking at the sea at sunset, their backs turned to the observer. Six of them talk, laugh, take a selfie. The seventh instead scans the horizon, silent. Bedini explains: “I really like street photography and one day, while I was on holiday in Nice, I noticed these people sitting next to each other. The homogeneous pink of the sky inspired me. In my travels I like to capture the diversity in people’s ways of living and thinking.”
Young people have the power to read and change the world, therefore, together with the strength to demand international social justice. A value he firmly believed in Nino Santomartino. Having passed away last July, the vice-president of Focsiv and Aoi, creative director of Idea Comunicazione and central figure of the Third Sector was remembered by many colleagues and friends over the course of the day. The Focsiv Award for international volunteering, now in its 32nd edition, was dedicated to him.
“He was a just man, a sincere friend” says Ivana Borsotto, president of Focsiv, who speaks of a life spent making “the essential visible”, without ever leaving anyone behind.
He echoes her Giovanni Lattanzi, president of the Association of Italian International Cooperation and Solidarity Organizations (Aoi): “We wanted cooperation to emerge from the niche so that people know what we do, reaching the new generations”.
“Assertiveness, coherence, kindness and lightness” are the four adjectives that Santomartino’s wife, Rossella De Rosachoose to describe it. De Rosa, who received the award with his daughter Francesca, collected the thoughts of those who knew Santomartino in the book Nino. “Life next to Nino was like music” he says. “He managed to unite different worlds, between communication and the third sector, cooperation, volunteering, to create shared relationships so that everyone was friends.”
From the meeting, therefore, emerges the commitment to establish a prize in memory of Santomartino starting from 2026 aimed precisely at those young people in whom Nino believed so much: “In the next few weeks we will set up the promoting group”, announces Mario Mancini, president of the NGO Progettomondo.
Media partner of the Focsiv International Volunteering Award, as well as Christian familyalso the news agency Say and the daily newspaper Future.
