We already talked about the activities carried out by the volunteers of the Baobab Experience in Rome, we already explained how they provide help to the migrants arriving in Rome, and we already denounced the blind obstructionism of the institutions, with Mayor Virginia Raggi leading the way on that.

Apparently nothing will change

Since our last post in October 2016, other forced evictions carried out by the police have taken place at migrant emergency shelters provided by the Baobab Experience volunteers and the NGO MEDU (Doctors for Human Rights).

Following the evictions, a humanitarian reaction was witnessed: more and more volunteers joined the Baobab Experience, and more and more essential goods were been donated by civil society to help migrants to face winter.

Even if the institutions are silent on this emergency, arrivals are not decreasing: there were 35 new arrivals on December 5 alone.

Many people are obliged to sleep in the streets, at rail stations or under bridges, while the weather becomes colder by the day.

What reception really means

As long as migrants won't have a place to go during these cold days and nights, the Baobab Experience reminds us all what welcoming migrants means:

"We're going forward, because migrant reception is not only found though a bed and a ceiling overhead."

On December 5, some migrants who had been transferred to the Italian Red Cross Building on via del Frantoio in Rome, spent a day at Casetta Rossa Spa, an occupied building designated for social events involving the neighborhood. They learned how to make bread, watched the local football match together, and took a tour of the area, guided by locals.

The shelter offered by the Italian Red Cross won't be closed down until June 2017. That's a good thing, but it's not enough to face the increasing emergency caused by the continuous arrivals.

Numbers of the emergency and measures to take

Unfortunately, the shelters provided by the Red Cross and the city of Rome are already full. In the last two days, there have been 35 new arrivals; on the night between December 5 and 6, five kids aged between 18 and 25 slept in the cold street.

For this reason, the Baobab volunteers asked the institutions to broaden their look, beyond the emergency, and put in place some solutions that could be really helpful.

They asked to be authorized to organize, with help from MEDU volunteers, a shelter point with a mobile medical ambulatory unit and a legal aid point to inform migrants on their rights during the asylum process.