Rebibbia, the details of the “Everybody’s Sport – Prisons” project

Rebibbia prison for women, a special day. The one in which the 60 Sport and Health activity projects that will allow 10,000 Italian prisoners to play sports are presented. There are ministers and Olympic medalists. There are women who live here and who gave life to the first experience of a women’s soccer team in a prison: Atletico Rights. And then there are them, the boys of “Mare fuori”, the fiction of the moment: at every moment a request for an autograph or a video: for a daughter, a grandson, a friend. It is with them, with their stories that the morning takes off. Giovanna Sannino, Carmela in fiction, and Antonio D’Aquino, Milos, talk, tell, joke, aware that theirs is not just a personal success story. And when they get off the stage it is inevitable to start with the Scudetto, with this whole party that has infected their city. “Do you want to know the truth? I’m not a football fan, I don’t know who Spalletti is”, Giovanna tells us while Antonio, who has always been a fan, puts his hands in his hair. “But now I’ve become one, because it’s impossible not to be. I wasn’t in the city on the day of the Scudetto but I was seized by a great desire to go back. And that wait was nice too, yes, the draw with Salernitana, that postponement, sip the joy that was coming. And then there is one thing that strikes you: happiness, the Neapolitans are happier”. Antonio-Milos tells of a phone call: “With my father. Who started crying because this story is part of the bond that exists between me and him, which took me to the stadium when we were at the end of everything and played in Serie A.” C. Just a few years after the Scudetti, a few years after Maradona. At that moment Diego was the only one to defend, to protect the Neapolitans, to make us respect them. This is why Naples loves him so much”. It’s different now, many have said it. Naples is at the top of many rankings, not just that of the soccer league. Clemente Russo, Olympic silver boxer and today technical director of the Fiamme Azzurre, quotes a number: “Out of 100 successful rappers, 80 are Neapolitans”. Music, football, but also cinema. Naples like. “Because – replies Giovanna Sannino – we have finally begun to see our being surrounded by so much beauty, a beauty so heterogeneous as to represent a small world”.

SEA AND HOPE

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“Mare fuori” is also part of this boom. “I have received many messages from many young people who tell me that by looking at us they have seen hope and a possibility of finding a new path”, explains D’Aquino. Yet in the “Mare out” it sometimes seems that everything is closed, everything is violence, everything is returned to an ineluctable path. “But the sea gives a strong sense of freedom and tells of a great possibility of starting over. Before “Mare fuori” I did a theater workshop in Nisida. It helped me a lot. Then I went back to shoot and I was among the boys : at first I felt a lot of anger, because it’s easy to fall into stereotypes about Naples. I felt a sense of loneliness, feeling like guinea pigs or freaks in a freak show while only asking for affection and a little respect. At the beginning there was a wall between of us, but then something changed, there was a leap in quality, it’s as if even through us they had breathed in a little of the beauty of the sea that surrounds them.This is why sport is also important, because it helps to put heat circulation”.

RIGHT TO SPORT

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The “Everyone’s Sport – Prisons” project also provides for reintegration into sport at the end of the prison period. “Sport has the power to change the world, bring hope where there was only despair, as Nelson Mandela said – says Nadia Fontana, director of the Rebibbia women’s prison – it is a universal language that reaches everyone”. Justice Minister Carlo Nordio illustrates the idea of ​​being able to use the disused barracks to expand the offer of sports activities for prisoners. Sport’s Andrea Abodi underlines the value of sport “as a social humanitarian defense” and announces the project to install 1,500 playgrounds in southern Italy in municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants”. “Every prisoner must have the right to practice sport” , adds Vito Cozzoli, president-CEO of Sport e Salute. Massimiliano Rosolino questions Aldo Montano, two Olympians in one fell swoop, on the importance of getting up after a fall. “The truth – says the golden saber in Athens – is that a defeat can sometimes teach you more than a victory”. And when all the words run out and you have many things to think about, there is just one verse of the acronym of the very popular series of Giovanna and Antonio that you almost seem to hear: “Nun worry you’ guaglio’ / ce sta o’ mare fore”. Words that evidently are not just fiction.