AIPI
Project Meeting 3/5 December 2010
Loubna Handou

My name is Loubna Handou, I am a bilingual educator. In the last two years I have been working with AIPI at Rosa Luxemburg High School, and in other projects, as tutor, bilingual educator, mediator, as I am of Moroccan origin. I normally work with girl students coming form Morocco or other countries in the Maghreb area. 
I came to Italy with my family when I was five years old; when I attended primary and junior high school I was a student in the AIPI activities, in extracurricular time (doposcuola). I attended Rosa Luxemburg where I graduated and then studied Political Science at Bologna University, where I got my degree three years ago. My reasearch theses was about second generation of  young migrants. 
When I was a high school student I worked as a peer-tutor, helping students my age in studying and facing teenagers’ problems, but after graduation I felt the need to enhance my competence, and now, after many training years, and deep experience, what I am proposing to students with AIPI and in the schools si more empowerment actions, especially for girls of arab origin, both newcomers and “second generation students”. 
What we do, when we meet, inside or outside school, is reflecting all together on the uneasiness these girls live inside the school, with the problems they face in the relation with other students, or with teachers, and within their families. 
We talk a lot, and as I can see, they suffer deeply from the views on foreign issue coming from italian society and media. Their lack of self-esteem, their difficulty in building their identity often comes from this problematic view. This is why, for them, having a free space, where they can discuss and share their feelings with a person, not only coming form the same cultural background, but also who has had the same migration, schooling, life experience, can be a relief. Moreover, a person who, having faced the same problems they have to face now, has achieved good gains, in terms of schooling, of identity building, not as a “subaltern identity”, is for them a positive example, a model which can encourage them in everyday struggle. 
Very often, they live strong tensions in their famiglie: there is a open gap between their projects, and their family projects, their needs and their family needs. This is true especially for girls. In our meetings, where we work on the active and empathic listening methodology, I collect many voices coming from these girls. I would like to share some of them with you.
Sara says:
Sometimes I fell ashamed of been Moroccan, I wish I were the same as my schoolmates. Then, on my way home, my continous arguing with my father, reminding me all the time that I am moroccan, and therefore I have to act as my tradition prescribes. He doesn’t understand how important it would be for me to go out, have fun, be independent as other italian students my age do.  

And Fatma: 
The gap between what you live inside and outside your home is normal for us, teenagers coming from other countries. Outside, you have to follow standards which are set by the society, home, you have to be what your parents urge you to be. But I am Fatma, inside and outside. Eating spaghetti or cous cous, speaking italian or moroccan, is nothing to me. I just want to find a balance between these two worlds, even if sometimes I end up crashing with both of them. 

Let me now explain in detail what we do
According to the economic resources dedicated to our project, we plan averagely 2 to 10 hours per week for our meetings in small group. What we do is discussions, homework, study. Our meetings are not only aimed to listening and promoting well-being on an abstract bases, but I think it is very important for them to have good schooling achievements, to have someone believing in their potential academic success, that’s why it is very important to support them in the study, in doing homework, in helping them in the everyday schooling tasks. This is strictly linked also to their resiliance in enduring school life, in preventing them to abandon school as soon as they can. 
They need to believe and to dream that, even if they are sons of foreign people, they still can become doctors, or lawyers.