From Europe (Rome)
On a sunny April morning in Rome, crowds are bustling past the fashionable shops on Via Nazionale. Few notice the side-entrance to St Paul’s Within the Walls, the striking pink and cream American Episcopal church, or the people who slip in and out discreetly. But descending the narrow steps to the church’s crypt, you feel as though you are entering another world.
In the basement more than 100 young men – there is just one female refugee at the centre that morning – mill about, some playing ping-pong, others sitting about in their ethnic groups chatting. Half of them are sitting quietly in front of a television screen at one end of the crypt. Bizarrely, these young African, Middle Eastern and Asian men in their 20s and 30s are completely engrossed in the British royal wedding being broadcast live.
The crypt doubles as the Joel Nafuma Refugee Centre and it receives up to 250 political refugees a day, most of them from Afghanistan and Somalia. Not to be confused with other immigrant groups such as economic migrants, the people who use the centre have fled political persecution and wars in their homelands and are in the process of claiming political asylum in Italy.
The centre is an important social hub for them to meet others who speak their language. It provides meals, classes and basic provisions such as second-hand clothing.
More here-
http://www.wantedinrome.com/articles/complete_articles.php?id_art=1104
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