Presenting the Community Partners for the year 2025-2026

On 3 Novembre 2025 the community partners for the 2025-2026 IN.TRA project were present in Aula 9 in the Teaching Hub of the Forlì Campus of the University of Bologna to introduce their projects for this academic year. Students had the opportunity to learn about the various communities with which they will collaborate with the year as part of the service-learning course. As a matter of fact, each and every participating organization was able to attend the presentation and introduce their organizations, along with their goals for this year. Some were able to attend in person, while others connected online, but they all presented their inspiring projects and explained how students can contribute to these endeavours through service-learning, highlighting how important new ideas are for the enrichment of their initiatives.

The first community partner to present its project was the Villaregia Missionary Community, which is active in Italy, South America and Africa. More specifically, in the Americas they operate in Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico, and in Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and Mozambique in Africa. Margherita Coralli, who works in the area of abuse prevention, represented the organization. Villaregia has created specific initiatives in both education and healthcare, establishing training centres, kindergartens, after-school spaces and medical centres. Moreover, they assist some of the more disadvantaged groups in society, such as women, with microcredit programs. They contacted IN.TRA to request the translation of the newly developed guidelines on the prevention of child abuse into French, Spanish and Portuguese. This document is essential for their activities, especially regarding the training of new collaborators.

The social cooperative DiaLogos, IN.TRA’s main community partner last year, was next to present. DiaLogos was founded in Forlì in 2011, and it provides social, health and educational services; their aim is to foster the inclusion, integration and social connection of people coming from different social, geographical, cultural and religious backgrounds. Throughout such activities, like managing the Immigrant Integration and Inclusion Services Center, the cooperative provides information services, cultural mediation services, assistance and housing for newly arrived migrants to those who request it or have received international protection status. The organization also takes part in social housing initiatives and activities for children and teenagers like study groups and workshops. This was also the perfect opportunity for DiaLogos to present the tasks carried out by IN.TRA last year, like creating glossaries of healthcare terminology, managing translation memories, and writing and translating simplified texts regarding fundamental information for all citizens. The cooperative reiterated their interest in including new ideas that reflect the personal interests and experiences of students, as happened with the teen book club initiative that was the result of a suggestion from a student last year.

The third partner was a pleasant and unexpected novelty: Plastic Free Onlus, represented by its general director Lorenzo Zitignani, founded in 2019. Its aim, with four main projects in 40 countries, is to remove the plastic that is increasingly invading natural areas and spread awareness through projects with schools, companies and institutions. Their project focused on protecting turtles is also worth mentioning, since their survival is at risk due to plastic pollution. The apolitical and non-partisan organisation actively cooperates with the Italian and European Parliaments and is a  permanent observer of the UN. This process of international expansion was incredibly fast, which led  the association to contact IN.TRA  to request the translation of their website and other official documents. Their needs could vary over time, as they are experiencing constant growth, so new opportunities for students may arise .

The fourth partner to present their project, Ma Petite Planète, is also involved in the field of environmental activism. Founded in 2019, the organization creates and disseminates challenges and games to encourage people to act to protect our planet. Ma Petite Planète presents quarterly challenges through their app to help participants learn more about their carbon footprint and reducing the waste of resources – especially water – inviting schools, companies and institutions to join in. They have an international audience, and for this reason began a collaboration with IN.TRA last year for the localization of these challenges. Deeper research on Italian resources about climate change and environmental protection is also required. This allows every participant to learn more about their individual situation, instead of reading international statistics that may seem far away from day-to-day life.

The next speaker was Giulia Tarducci: she presented Cittadinanza Onlus, an organization active in Kenya, Ethiopia and India that supports cooperative social and healthcare projects, with the goal of improving access to quality treatment. The organization works directly in Africa and India, contributing to the education of colleagues onsite from Italian experts in various fields, such as psychiatry, child neuropsychiatry, psychotherapy and developmental psychology. They have also opened centers for children with disabilities and mental health clinics in the countries where they work, fighting against discrimination and ableism. Their nutritional project in Kenya needs IN.TRA’s collaboration: one of the tasks proposed for the first semester is the proofreading of an English document that describes the nutritional program conducted in Kenya. Cittadinanza Onlus will also require editing services for documents regarding research on disability in Kenya, mother-child relationship/attachment and the relationship between suicide rates and gender violence in Ethiopia. Further tasks may arise depending on the opportunities the association is presented.

This year’s sixth community partner is from a field quite different from the others: the project Radici Cosmiche, presented and led by Leonardo De Deo in collaboration with Bartolo Giuseppe Dimattia, is active in inclusive science communication for people with disabilities. The project – in cooperation with the Collegio Superiore of the University of Bologna and the Volhand-Gruppo Volontari Handicap association – starts by asking scientific questions relevant for all individuals, to then focus on topics that tie astronomy and environmental sustainability, connecting science with daily life. The project does this through various projects, such as experimental gardens or art workshops in order to go deeper into scientific topics. IN.TRA’s services are needed to translate the illustrated book Cronache dal Cosmo: Terre in Vista!, a bildungsroman that crosses the universe, intended for children between 9 and 13 years old and written by De Deo and Dimattia, PhD students in astrophysics and agricultural science, respectively.

The last community partner of the year is JL Project, which has created and is currently maintaining a database that documents illegal migrant rejections in the Central Mediterranean route. The depositions and data collected can be used as proof to demonstrate how Italian institutions are complicit in these activities and to provide legal assistance to migrants, victims of serious human rights violations. JL Project needs students to translate dossiers of the refoulements  from Italian into English. Once these documents are translated into a lingua franca used by the international community, they will be available to leading institutions, courts of justice and organizations that provide legal assistance in Europe and around the world.

Now students have a full overview of this year’s activities and can decide which one they would like to be a part of as they embark on their service-learning journey.