Multicultural Community in Roma!!

Today we visited a multicultural community in Tor Pinattara, Rome. Becci, whom have worked in this community for many years, is professional in teaching immigrants youth and woman. Tor pinattara is a community, which has many immigrants from different countries. This is a fabulous experience for us because it is important to know that Rome is not only famous for its historical sites, but also for its social dynamics. Becci introduced us the Scvola elementary school, which serving immigrant’s youth and now it has become an important resource for immigrant families in Tor Pinattara. Becci also brought us to the School of Woman, and she showed us how the Tor Pinattara community helping with immigrants families, especially the women and child.
During our little trip this diverse immigrant community in Rome, the most impressive site was the School of Women. This is actually a community center that serves over 120 immigrant women who studies Italian there. These women can be from everywhere in the world, such as Africa, Asia and Middle East. The center also serves immigrant children age from 1-5 as a preschool. The most impressive thing about this school is that its method of teaching these immigrant women, which many are mothers, was using a mix method of many different approach, such as Reggio Emilia and Montessori. The moment we went into the school, we saw many art work from these adult students, such as the representation of doors from their home countries. The most interesting representation to me was the artwork that women made which represent how they have waited for their husband or for their marriage just like Penelope. Our school guide, Becci told us that many immigrant women, especially those from Africa, can be waited for years in order to get marry to their husbands since many men will immigrate first and build a foundation before having the women marry over. Moreover, this community center uses storybook, puzzle, memory game, etc., to teach these women Italian, which is really interesting and surprising to me since these methods are not commonly use for teaching immigrant adults English in the U.S.

Tor Pinattara is a diverse community. In order to give new immigrants families a better place to live in without losing their own culture, the community is working hard on building new social structure by integrating different cultural perspectives into the community, such as religion practice and food. In the end of our trip, we visited a Hindu temple and Muslim temple. It was a really interesting and new experience for us.

Rainy & Julie