A brief history of Piam.

Progetto Integrazione Accoglienza Migranti (PIAM) is a organization for migrants’s rights and anti-trafficking located in Asti, a small town near Turin.

In 1999 Princess Okokon and her husband Alberto Mossino started their activity by trying to give a concrete answer to the large presence of young women forced into prostitution on the streets of our Country  with the street unites activities for health’s prevention and two hospitality houses for those who decided to escape and make a new life for themselves.

We did not   and we do not want to safe any life, our task is not to judge but to offer a chance to those who had few opportunities or maybe nothing at all. With the passing of time  we released that the question was wider and  more complicated. However, it’s not enough to give shelter and assistance to overcome the emergency. We must offer to them a real opportunity to improve entirely their lives. Room and boarding are the first level of welcoming. Then we need something really important: the rights!

The right to citizenship, the right to work, the right to housing, the right to health, the right to education, the right to maternity, the right to social services, the right to independence, the right to dream. The integration goes through the rights, equal and for everyone.

Since then, we have started to promote campaign and projects for integration of migrants, specially refugees, who are arriving in thousands in our Country. They are men, women and children, escaping from wars and persecutions. They are trying to achieve peacefulness, freedom and a future for themselves.

In Asti we welcomed them,trying to do our best. Aware of not having the solution, we only gave a small contribution to improve the life of these unlucky people who search just a little bit of normality. This is the result of our efforts to sustain the commitments taken with the Territorial Government Office, also sharing a sense of responsibility brought by the circumstances. Along these months many citizens from Asti have actively taken part to welcome these people.

We will go on the same track for the next few years, believing that the ”real security” inevitably builds through the social life of people who live, love and dream in a thousand different ways and at the same time are a community of equal individuals both in opportunities and rights. We got some great satisfaction as when from 2005 to 2009 we went to Nigeria to form a project named ‘Safe Sex Long Life’.

There have been many difficult moments, mistakes, precarious balances, but we wouldn’t tell about these ones…