Riace is a small village in Calabria, which is a very
pretty region of Italy, but also quite a poor one.
Riace once had a population of 3,000, but in the
1990s a shortage of jobs meant that many of the
inhabitants, especially young people, left the
village to find work in other places. The only
school closed. There were no restaurants and very
few shops. Many houses were empty. Riace was
becoming a ghost town. But these days it's a
different story, because of one man whose dreams
have turned Riace into a village with a future.
One day in 1998, Domenico Lucano, a teacher from Riace,
was driving near the sea when he saw a large group of
people on the beach. They were refugees who had arrived
by boat to escape problems in their countries. Lucano had
an idea of how to help these people and how they, in turn,
might possibly help him save his village. He decided to
welcome them into the village and to give them food and
accommodation in return for work. The refugees also had to learn Italian.
It was the beginning of a plan. Lucano created an organisation called Città Futura, or City of the Future. The idea was simple: Riace desperately needed more inhabitants and there were plenty of people in the world looking for a home. The village began to welcome refugees from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and other places. Lucano used buildings which had been empty for years to house the new arrivals, and he created workshops for them to work in.
Riace is now home to between two and three hundred immigrants, who live happily alongside the locals. Most of the women make handicrafts to sell in local shops, while the men renovate empty houses to rent to tourists. But it is not only the refugees who have gained from Lucano's plans: Città Futura also has 13 local employees, which makes it the biggest employer in the village. And because of the arrival of more children, the school is open again. Lucano, who became mayor of Riace in 2004, has managed to create jobs and to stop the villagers moving away, while at the same time helping some of the poorest and most desperate people in the world.
Many politicians have visited Riace hoping that they can use Lucano's ideas in their own towns and cities. The German film director Wim Wenders also went there and was inspired to make a short documentary about the village called Il Volo (The Flight). Lucano himself was voted third in the 2010 'World Mayor' competition, and was praised for his courage and compassion.
