Children without bars, the “Yellow Space” inaugurated in the prison in Matera

ROME – In Matera was inaugurated the Yellow Space Of Children without bars Ets the place created by the Association that welcomes children and supports them to orient themselves and mitigate their impact with a potentially traumatic environment such as prison, when they have to meet the imprisoned parent.

In Italy 100,000 children with imprisoned parents. The ceremony was attended by the director of the Rosa Musicco Institute, the commander of the Institute Semeraro Bellisario, the president of the Province of Matera Piero Marrese and other authorities. The inauguration of Yellow Space Of Children without bars gives credit to the project supported by Enel Heart, the Enel Group’s non-profit organization active alongside the realities that intervene to protect the needs of those who live in conditions of fragility and social hardship, and is available to the approximately 100 minors who enter the Matera prison every year to meet their father, considering that it responds to the needs of 100 thousand children with an imprisoned parent in Italy and 2 million in Europe. Children who live their secret about their imprisoned parent in silence in an attempt not to be stigmatized and excluded.

The Yellow space of Matera. Born in Milan in 2007, lo Yellow Space it has become a model and is now active in a national network in Lombardy, Piedmont, Marche, Tuscany, Campania, Puglia, Calabria and Sicily. The one in Matera is the first one opened in the Basilicata region. It is a physical and relational place for children inside the prison, where children and their families prepare to meet the imprisoned parent and are followed by operators who intercept their needs and welcome them in a space dedicated to them. It is the same space where, after the interview, the child can decant the emotional consequences of the difficult separation that always occurs after the meeting.

No, it’s not a lodoteca. The Yellow Space it has a psycho-pedagogic function in the sense that its nature is not that of a playroom, but of a place where, through verbal interlocution with children, one also dialogues with the families who accompany them and sets up a delicate work of relationship and care for children and adults. The team that made it possible Yellow Space in the Matera prison it is made up of Marilena Savoia, Tiziana Silletti, Martina Gallon, Walter Gentile and Francesco Matera Marcosano.

A bill of rights, unique in Europe. At the center of Yellow Space System is the child and his rights, recognized in the “Charter of the rights of the children of imprisoned parents”valid from 21 March 2014 in all Italian prisons, created and wanted by Children without barssigned by the Ministry of Justice and the Authority for childhood and adolescence, a unique charter in Europe, which formally recognizes the right of these children to maintain the emotional bond with the imprisoned parent, in compliance with article 9 of the UN Convention on childhood and adolescence which reaffirms the right to parenthood of detainees and commits the penitentiary system to a culture of acceptance.