A reported 12,000 Ukrainian minors have been enrolled in Italian schools, out of a total of 30,467 minors who have reached the country as of Friday, April 1. Overall, Italy is currently hosting some 79,000 Ukrainian refugees. Over 1,800 sleeping accommodations and several apartments confiscated by authorities from criminal organizations have been made available for them.
Refugees are continuing to arrive in Italy from Ukraine. A total of 79,047 people had reached the country as of Friday, April 1. They included 40,780 women, 7,800 men and 30,467 minors. A reported 12,000 children and teens have been enrolled in Italian schools.
Education Minister Patrizio Bianchi told the Lower House last week that further funding will be necessary if more Ukrainian minors will be enrolled in school, especially in view of the next school year and given that the number of Ukrainian students is expected to grow.
Authorities also made housing confiscated from criminal organizations available for refugees, including 1,800 sleeping accommodations and numerous apartments, "some of which are immediately available," Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese said on Friday, April 1, in Naples.
Refugees transferred from Rimini to other regions
In some areas, refugees are being transferred, including at the last minute. This happened in Rimini, the Italian city with the highest number of people who have fled the war, where some refugees were relocated outside the region. A bus departed on Friday, April 1, from a hotel of the seaside city.
But refugees boarded the bus without knowing where they were going. Some said they would be taken to a CAS reception center in the northern region of Piedmont, but other regions were also mentioned. Many did not accept to leave, others had to sign a document in which they declared that they were refusing State aid.
"We were told last night at 8 that we had to pack", said two women who had arrived with their children and grandchildren, one from Kyiv and the other from Dnipro. "Nobody knows anything" about their final destination, they said. "We are treated worse than prisoners."
A family including four generations has fled to the Marche
Meanwhile a family including four generations -- a three-month-old baby boy, his mother, grandmother and the 74-year-old great-grandmother -- arrived in the coastal town of Porto San Giorgio, in the province of Fermo in the central Marche region.
They were part of a group of 40 people taken from the border of Ukraine to Italy by cultural association Marchemagiche. Six of them stopped in Mestre, in the northeastern Veneto region, hosted by family and friends, while the other 36 travelled to the Marche. The baby with his mother and grandmothers found housing in Falerone, a small town near Fermo. Those who saw the baby said they could "read the future" in his eyes.