Ghetto Out - Casa Sankara

Country: Italy

Wellbeing of Farmers:  Physical Wellbeing, Mental Wellbeing, Social Wellbeing

Key Challenges: Lack of basic services, Lack or difficulties in accessing health services, Administrative burden, Legal employment/ fair working conditions, Pressure from society/negative perceptions

Key Target Groups: Farm Workers (laborers), Farmers facing financial difficulties

Farm Size: Small/Family

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Key contact: Ghetto Out Casa Sankara

Email: ghettoutcasasankara@gmail.com

Organization: Casa Sankara

Relevant Links:

Website

Summary

Ghetto Out- Casa Sankara is a voluntary association that offers migrants who are victims of exploitation an alternative dwelling, basic personal services, administrative support and regular work opportunities.

It was set up on the initiative of a group of migrants, formerly victims of exploitation, who still run it and who, thanks to the support of the Apulia region, have obtained the premises of an old abandoned farm. Here it produces products for self-consumption and direct sale, offers accommodation to migrants, and organises activities to promote mutual understanding and integration.

Objective

Their aim is to provide a legal and decent economic and social integration path to migrants victims of exploitation, to providing better living conditions and the opportunity of a regular employment, and fostering the integration among cultures

Activities 

It offers migrant workers housing (its lack is among the reasons why migrants are victims of exploitation by irregular intermediaries), regular job opportunities, bureaucratic, administrative legal support.
It also organizes activities to increase the awareness of the exploitation problem within the community and to facilitate integration.

Through its action, the SI improve workers living conditions and their social acceptance within the local community

Main Outcome of the activity

Being the SI owners also the farm’s owners and farm workers at the same farm, they have provided themselves with a solution to reverse their previous status of illegality and exploitation and contemporarily they provide other migrants with the same precious opportunity of relief (regular employment, administrative, legal and social support, accommodation, etc).

There is also the opportunity for outside farmers to make contact with the SI’ owners and join their network to recruit, regularly, the workforce

Main Practical Recommendations

This is one of the few best practices existing throughout the Italian territory that was founded by former victims of caporalato themselves and that is nowadays able to provide other migrants and victims of labour exploitation with the same opportunity. Besides generating evidence on how to tackle and reverse the gang master system and more in general the phenomenon of irregular work in agriculture, it contribute to entrepreneuring as an emancipatory process with broad change potential.


Key Stakeholders Involved
  • Farmworkers
  • Migrants

Most Innovative Aspects of the Solution

Firstly, this SI has been created and still is managed by former victims of labour exploitation. Thus oppressed victims were able to reverse their status quo and partially the illegal system they forcibly belonged to, becoming entrepreneurs and owners of their own farm activity.

The most innovative aspect is given therefore by the ability of its founders to make themselves room within the society and becoming part of the local economic system, legally and decently contributing to the overall food system.

Remarkably, this SI exists and has kept on improving thanks to the contribution and support of local institutions, thus worth noting is the networking ability among migrants and local institutions.