The eleventh of August, 1997, following the notification of a public competition in the municipality of Fiumicino (outside of Rome), n association of volunteers together assumed a four month project for the management of a social assistance and vigilance at the Reception Centre of Passoscuro (north west of Rome).

 The purpose of the project was to deliver services and benefits such as to permit the starting and consolidation, within the four months period, of autonomous and socially integrative processes. To better facilitate such processes, people who were guests would be assured through a personalised way:

- Informational services of interpretation, assistance and social secretariat concerning the possibility of directing practices for the obtaining of regularisation, residence or other documents, access to the existing public services, and whatever else would be considered necessary for the enjoyment of the rights and fulfilment of duties;

-  Orientation to the production of an autonomous income, sustaining the finding of autonomous living conditions, and legal assistance.

- First health care delivered with the same volunteers personnel or through the public sanitary services, school support and animation for childhood.

- Activities aimed at developing socialisation of the guests among them, and with the inhabitants of the territory.

 The management of the structure is guaranteed 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, through personnel suited to the reception functions and social support necessary to the delivery of the services foreseen in the project.

 With a high grade of responsibility and involvement, the participation of two organisations, one secular and the other Catholic which would have in the past been considered unthinkable but today reach the same common objectives , it was necessary to focus on the respective sensibilities and competence, increasing the value of diversities.

The intervention was aimed at setting up a favourable relationship for the collaboration with the existing reality, institutional, associative, political and economic already present and active in the territory. The willingness of those responsible in the schools, cultural and sports associations, public and private health facilities, political and public forces, and individual citizens reinforces, the conviction that the Reception Centre constitutes a necessary step to give way to the process of cultural and social sensitivity towards welcoming, as well as introducing migrant people into an interculture.

The work turned to the individualisation and realisation of projects with the scope of providing an autonomy to the families and including them in the social and productive life of the territory, process which resulted to be effective, even if not completely for everyone.

The dialogue and alternative ways, al least in the period of these four months, were neither sufficient nor effective with some families because of their historical and cultural background differences, prejudices and prevention, ignorance or distorted interpretations of laws and social rules, individual psychological characteristics, lacking sense of reality and responsibility, luck of trust, personal histories often of deprivation, injustice and abuse.