Come and play too with the flamboyant Giocherenda!
Palermo is a multicultural city. Conquered by different nations and cultures, from the byzantine to the Arab, so it has become an exemplar of immigration and of coexistence between different realities. This place is well known to be friendly and open, where people can meet, talk and create new projects together. The beauty of this city is the bridge it has between the characteristics of the big cities and the atmosphere typical of the little towns, where everyone knows everybody and word of mouth is the main way line of communication. Herewithin Giocherenda was born.
What does Giocherenda mean?
Giocherenda is a word of the African language that means : “Solidarity, awareness of interdependence, strength that rises from sharing and joy from working together”. This is similar to the Italian word “giocare” (to play”) which inspired the name of our game and to create efficient instruments to form big narrations, find lost memories and experiment with the taste for sharing.
What is Giocherenda?
Giocherenda could be defined as a big family, learning to work with ups and downs together. It is the synthesis of a diverse team, whose members come from different countries and cultures, with different lifestyles but we all still share the same objective. It is an association born by chance, where the aim is to learn to foster dialogue through the use of games and activities, not with the aim of competing but with the aim of sharing. The perfect example to describe us is the game of the thread, where people are tied and need to cooperate and help each other to free themselves without breaking it.
Who participates in the activities of Giocherenda? Where do they take place?
Everyone can participate in Giocherenda activities, from children to adults, with and without a migration background. Foremost, we work with the children in the Zen neighbourhood still deeply defined by the wake of the earthquake in the 80s. For many this place is purely featured by its difficulties, yet for us it is an opportunity and a model for change. As most of us have migrant backgrounds, we want to give back what we have given..
Why is Giocherenda different from any other association?
The speciality of Giochereda is that it is built by a group of young people under 25 with different abilities, backgrounds and origins, in particular from Africa. Omar is the brains of the group, he is able to build out of nowhere our plays, wooden scooters and also our furniture. Dawda and Moussa take care of the tailoring, while Hajar, Ibrahim and Mustapha take care of the animations. Our games are created to get to know eachother better and to be able to open up about ourselves that otherwise we wouldn’t have easily shared.
How do you see your future?
In our future we would like to be autonomous and to be able to fully commit our time to the cause of Giocherenda. The funds that enabled us to work are currently over, and with the lockdown the situation has unfortunately gotten worse.
How could we help you?
You could support us by looking at our website, sharing our message of solidarity to people you know. This would help raise and spread awareness about us and our message to different people.
Welcome to the colourful store of Giocherenda!
Don’t you just love these colours? Do you want to support their activity? Then visit their
Our team in Witten strongly supports Giocherenda’s cause of solidarity – and as you can see: we are big fans of their handcrafted products, such as their beautiful coloured and unique laptop bags.
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