Half a year after the war, Ukrainian refugees are still living in Venice. «Many in the families that hosted them at the beginning»
VENICE – Ukrainian refugees? Half is left here. Almost a year after the outbreak of war, on 24 February 2022, many have returned home and just as many have moved elsewhere, but the presence in the city and province of those who fled the bombs and devastation continues to be important of their land, arriving here to ask for refuge in the Venetian.
i numbers
Here are the numbers: of the 1,433 people in the city who applied for a residence permit to the Police Headquarters, 708 still live in the municipal area, for the most part, and precisely 472, in the same families that welcomed them from the very first moment, bearing all the expenses. More or less the same order of magnitude, around 50% permanence, can also be applied to the rest of the metropolitan city: of the thousand refugees relating to the other 43 municipalities in addition to that of Venice, who gradually had been registered in the single portal of open reference for the Ukrainian emergency, half a thousand still live where they arrived about ten months ago.
The data is contained in the single big brain wanted personally by the mayor Luigi Brugnaro (who, first of all, is still hosting a woman with two daughters at his home in Mogliano Veneto) and created by Venis, the IT arm of Ca’ Farsetti, to have a detailed and real-time picture of the situation so as to better activate all the assistance devices for refugees. Many had arrived because they had a connection, such as a relative who works as a caregiver or the Ukrainian communities themselves usually active in the area. Many others, on the other hand, left “blindly”, sometimes with nothing in the true sense of the word, and in the city as well as in the provinces they were able to find support thanks to the mobilization of the great machine of solidarity organized very quickly by the institutions with the third sector and the world of Volunteering. A total of 1,108 lodgings were made available in the metropolitan city, of which 107 in the Municipality of Venice. Among the other municipalities that still host a significant number of Ukrainians are San Michele al Tagliamento (140), Mirano (79), San Donà (70) and Mira (67). Remaining only with data from the Municipality of Venice, 31 people are in extraordinary reception centres, 19 in the context of the reception and integration system at the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice municipal structure in Castello, 14 in rented homes, another 172 with other various types of modalities.
A tenth of those present, 77 people, found work. Again with regard to Venice, during this year 267 hospitality ceased and 416 transfers, of which 317 are those who have left, including those who have returned home to Ukraine, the satisfactory ones in another Italian region and also all those who went abroad.
«Faced with the wave of departures – explains the councilor for social cohesion Simone Venturini – a system was immediately set up to host, integrate and give tools to families and people arriving in the area. They have been particularly complicated months, especially the first ones, when there was a very first response to welcome. But then, also, on the health front, in times of Covid with swabs and vaccinations, for school placements, residence permits. Having set up the portal where families could register and enroll their guests in order to obtain certain services, such as free public transport, was a further strength that made the Venice model suitable for other cities as well. We are still engaged in integration services, in schools, in volunteering and in guaranteeing all the people who have chosen to stay here the opportunity to put down roots. A big thank you must be made to all the realities that have shown great availability and support, including the parishes, the diocesan Caritas, the associations, the world of sport and many good-hearted citizens”.