Short bio

I was born in Cisternino, Puglia, in southern Italy in 1989, I am the son of a generation of photographers and teachers. I started working in Bologna, at reception centers for asylum seekers, both minors and foreign adults. There I developed and put into practice a training project for teaching the Italian language as a principal tool for success. Today I work for the Community for Social Inclusion at Opera di Padre Marella, located in San Lazzaro di Savena (Bologna). In the community, I play the role of both socio-cultural educator and teacher of Italian as a foreign language. This reality is for me a training ground in which I let out my professional qualities as a teacher.

My story

My grandfather Francesco was the first photographer in our town during the post-war years, and he passed on this trade to my father, who in turn transmitted a photographer’s sensitivity to me, and especially to my sister. The choice of my university studies in the humanities, and specifically literature, was based on this paternal artistic drive; along with it came the maternal "intellectual", understood as "teaching something to others."

During the summer of my state exams, I read the novel Il Piacere by D'Annunzio, a book full of passion, travel and life experiences. This was another inspiration.

When I graduated, I decided to travel with my sister to Australia, destination Melbourne. We had been traveling for a year and a half around east Australia and in the south of Tasmania, occasionally taking jobs such as waiters, dishwashers and farm workers. I spent the last part of our trip working as a street sweeper in Sydney's central parks, where I met some homeless people in the city.

Their humanity stimulated me and directed me towards my current profession: social educator and teacher of Italian for people of foreign origin.

My choice of studies and training in teaching Italian is linked to a desire to escape from a small hill town in southern Italy, Cisternino, the place of my family home that has always accompanied and trained me in my years of growth. The vision of the landscape, the historic center, and the locals was my first form of personal discovery in the world, the birth of curiosity. The fear of remaining anonymous made me destined to follow in my father’s footsteps.

The opportunity to study allowed me to discover the pleasure of learning new things, especially related to art, cinema, theater, music and literature. The poetry texts and the novels of adventure, training and avant-garde experimentation have encouraged me to open my curiosity towards new forms of verbal and non-verbal language and interaction.

I wanted my study discovery to become something widespread among those who start from disadvantage.

Fresh from my Australian experience, I am aware of what it means to have difficulty and to feel frustration in not being able to communicate or be understood. If I could live a better and richer life and closer to my expectations in another language, then I would do everything to find the ways that make me satisfied, freewheeling and determined to carry out a life project in line with my ideals that is open to new ideas.