PAGELLA IN TASCA – Education Pathways for Refugee Children is a pilot project, promoted by INTERSOS in partnership with UNHCR, the Municipality of Turin, and other partners, which aims to open a new regular and safe entry channel so that unaccompanied refugee minors can have the opportunity to come to Italy without having to risk their lives on a boat in the Mediterranean.
This is the first international experimentation of a complementary pathway for unaccompanied minors, highly innovative compared to the entry channels currently active, such as humanitarian corridors, because:
- it is specifically dedicated to the protection of unaccompanied minors, currently excluded from humanitarian corridors from non-EU countries and from most other entry channels;
- it is aimed at promoting the right to education and is based on the issuance of an entry visa for non-university study, provided by Italian law for minors between 15 and 17 years old, but to date never used to promote the entry of refugee minors;
- the children are hosted by foster families, unlike what happens to almost all unaccompanied minors in Italy, who are placed in facilities for minors: this is a community sponsorship mechanism which provides, alongside families, also the involvement of civil society organizations, with a central role of municipalities and schools.
Nine unaccompanied minors aged between 16 and 17 years old participated in the project, which was carried out between 2020 and 2024. They are all Sudanese minors who fled alone from the violence in Darfur to Libya, where they suffered mistreatment and exploitation. They then sought refuge in Niger, a country that ranks among the last in the world in the Human Development Index and that does not offer them opportunities for study and future.
