Run across "Paths of community resilience" is an ActionAid Italia / PsyPlus Onlus project supported by Charity Fund Intesa Sanpaolo

Tomas and Terremoto tells the perspective of a child in the presence of an earthquake, an “ineluctable and unpredictable” giant that “shakes and devastates”.

The pencil of Kanjano has grasped the fundamental aspects of what operators and psychologists have been able to observe in three years of field work, from emergency to post-emergency, from the Sibillini and Laga mountains to the Marche coast, always alongside the most affected populations.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, with Intersos, PsyPlus proposed psychological support paths aimed at processing the trauma. Subsequently, with ActionAid, we thought of Pe.R.Co.rrere - Paths of community resilience, a project realized thanks to the support of the Intesa Sanpaolo Charity Fund. When the population returned to their own territory, returning from temporary shelters on the coast, people had to deal with an "unknown", deformed, mournful space.

The meeting spaces and the usual daily routine were now lost; in the prefabricated housing modules, we were confronted with the mourning of the places and with the disappearance of customs that have always marked our existence. Attentive to the requests for psychological support, we have observed a progressive change over the months, a decrease in post-traumatic symptoms and an increase in adaptation difficulties, in parental and relational problems, and in experiences of isolation.

We focused on containing post-traumatic manifestations and empowering communities, stimulating active participation in reconstruction and trying to offer recipients tools to counter the sense of precariousness and experiences of abandonment. Particular attention was paid to the school, pillar of society, a place for "reconstruction of the future", a context in which psychological and training services were promoted, in Arquata del Tronto, Camerino, Serravalle del Chienti and Muccia.

Right in the schools we met many girls and boys like Tomas. With the involvement of local associations, the project contributed to forming more open and cohesive communities, through participation practices and education for active citizenship.

In this sense we accompanied the friends of the Accumoli Music Band, closely following their intense activity, throughout Italy, guided by the bass drum that bears the motto “Why does the music continue”. With them we realized the Accumoli musical days, which hosted students from all over Italy at Accumoli, engaged in masterclasses held by musicians from the National Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and the Wiener Philarmoniker. With girls and boys, adolescents, elderly and elderly people from Accumoli, we collaboratively produced the documentary "Letters from Accumoli”, Testimony of the fact that another narration of the places of the earthquake is possible, places where it is once again possible to live.

In Ussita, with local associations, we contributed to the rediscovery of Planting, ritual whose tradition had been lost for the past 20 years; in Pescara del Tronto we supported the population in remembering life before the earthquake and to trace elements for reconstruction in the book “A journey into the memory of Pescara del Tronto”; in Amatrice we have facilitated the bottom-up evaluation of the emergency response. In the 18 months of Pe.R.Co.rrere, 948 interventions were provided in the activities of Mobile Proximity Unit, Psychological Support Desk, Expressive Artistic Workshops, Psycho-Pedagogical Counseling and Community Empowerment, involving 346 people in the territories of the crater Lazio and Marche.

In the participation courses 288 people were involved in focus groups, individual interviews, open workshops. In January 2020 the Pe.R.Co.rrere project ended. As operators and operators we know that closures bring with them natural complexity in terms of processing, even in ourselves. At the end of such an important journey, however, we know that the people benefiting from our interventions will return to being "solid and surprising" like the mountains on which they live, that the time spent together will be an important piece of their and our identity; quoting Claudio Magris, we are “Tempo I represent”: not only «our present, but also that labyrinth of different times and eras that intertwine in a landscape and constitute it».