Every year, on June 20th, we celebrate World Refugee Day—a crucial moment to reflect on the condition of over 120 million people forced to flee their homes. For years, our association Popoli Insieme has marked this day with initiatives aimed at the public. But this year, our commitment—and that of all the organizations involved in the SAI network of the Municipality of Padua—went even further!
From June 16th to 22nd, Padua hosted the 2025 Refugee Week, a week of events that actively engaged many local organizations and turned the city into a hub of encounter, reflection, and participation. Meetings, performances, exhibitions, and workshops—all free of charge—were organized not only to raise awareness about the right to asylum and to highlight local projects for reception and integration, but above all to give visibility, voice, and value to the contributions of refugees within the communities we live in.
Our contributions
As part of this program, Popoli Insieme organized two initiatives.
On Thursday, June 19th, at the Altinate San Gaetano Cultural Center, we inaugurated the photographic exhibition “The Right Path”, the result of a human rights training course aimed at university students—including several refugees—focused on the language of photography. The works of the participants and the photographs of photojournalist Francesco Malavolta (who guided them through the journey) gave voice and image to individual experiences, breaking down stereotypes and exploring the meaning of freedom and dignity through the lens.
On June 20th, at the heart of the World Refugee Day, we screened the film “What We Fight For” at the garden-theatre of Palazzo Zuckermann. This documentary, created between 2021 and 2024, allowed us to delve into the challenges and hopes of three women fleeing from Iran and Afghanistan. The conversation with directors Sara Del Dot and Carlotta Marrucci, who were present for the screening, highlighted the extraordinary strength of those who refuse to be defined solely as “refugees” and instead assert themselves as individuals with their own dreams and identities.
A week to rediscover ourselves as a community
The international theme for this year’s Refugee Week was “Community as a Superpower”—a concept that guided us in designing and creating every initiative. Because while migration is often a solitary and painful experience, the encounter with a welcoming community can make all the difference.
To us, this week demonstrated exactly that: that together, we can build spaces where refugees are not merely “guests,” but active and vital parts of our cities—with their stories, but also their skills, ideas, and desire to contribute.
Behind the word “refugee”
We also wanted Refugee Week to be an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the word “refugee”—a term that certainly has legal and political significance but is often reductive, simplified, and turned into a mere label.
We asked ourselves: Who is behind that word? How can we tell these stories without falling into the usual stereotypes?
The initiatives we organized—the exhibition, the screening, and many other moments of dialogue—were our way of answering.
We tried to create spaces where people could tell their stories in their own terms—without filters, without labels. And we believe that this is the greatest value of Refugee Week: giving space to a plurality of voices and stories, without trying to force them into a single or prepackaged narrative.
An experience worth continuing
This first Refugee Week was a concrete example of what can be achieved when people work together with passion, vision, and mutual trust.
As Popoli Insieme, we carry home with us a wealth of emotions, relationships, and new awareness. And one strong desire: to continue this experience in the years to come—with the commitment to increasingly involve refugees not only as beneficiaries or witnesses but also as protagonists, organizers, and contributors of skills.
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Refugee Week 2025 was organized by the SAI of the Municipality of Padua and its local network, which includes Cooperativa Orizzonti, Associazione Popoli Insieme, Cooperativa sociale Coges Don Milani, Cooperativa Il Sestante, Refugees Welcome Italia, and the Centro Veneto Progetto Donna, in collaboration with the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology of the University of Padua.
