Cultivating humanity. A social farming experiment in Southern Italy
Antonella Valenti
In an internal and mountainous area of Southern Italy, some people with disabilities decided to join together to organise a form of permanence rooted in agricultural work. They wanted to found an independent way of life in agricultural work, in the dependence on the land and the seasons. Moreover, they wanted these independent lives to be based on clear values of community and solidarity. The article follows and reconstructs, through the direct voice of these cultivators of humanity, the creation and the first steps of this path: the difficulties and obstacles it encounters, the support it finds, the pedagogical project that implicitly establishes and accompanies it, and the impulses, passions and hopes that it contains and nourishes.
Keywords
Disability, independent living, social farming, inclusive pedagogy, empowerment, capabilities
