Carbonia - Italy's wealthy north may have tired of asylum seekers, but in one of the poorest regions of Sardinia locals are giving everything to clothe and feed refugee families.
Standing amid piles of shoes, t-shirts, pyjamas and baby bibs, Susanna Steri describes how she had to ask the inhabitants of Carbonia to stop bringing donations for the 90-odd men, women and children from Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
"We only had a few hours notice to prepare," Steri told AFP, describing the weekend of May 30, after distress calls made from 22 boats in the Mediterranean led to the rescue of 4,200 migrants, and the discovery of 17 bodies.
Steri was told that of the 900 people being brought to the island, the ENAP centre -- once used to teach youngsters traditional trades -- would be receiving 90 in need of emergency housing, including a four month-old baby.
Just a few kilometres inland from golden beaches where tourists dock their yachts to paddle in crystal waters, the unemployed rolled their sleeves up.
"It's difficult to describe what happened, the real difficulty was finding place for all the volunteers, not the migrants," she said, as another local couple arrived bearing boxes full of biscuits, baby food, fruit and milk.
The collapse of the area's coal mining industry, followed in 2012 by the closure of the Alcoa aluminium smelter, has driven youth unemployment in the Carbonia-Iglesias province in south-west Sardinia to a towering 73.9 percent.
AFP
