[Music]

Sara Marinelli (00:05):

I am Sara Marinelli, and this is Letters to Italy. In this series, I speak with Italian expats in the Bay Area at the time of Coronavirus. How has the pandemic reshaped our lives here and our relationship to Italy? If there has ever been a time to look back on our choices and ask the question “Where is home?" It is now.

This third episode features Lucina di Meco, a senior director of girls education and gender equality for a global nonprofit called Room to Read. She's also a researcher and advocate for women's rights and political leadership. She's originally from San Remo, in Liguria, and has lived in the U.S. since 2007. While in the last episode, Valentina Imbeni told us about the efforts to keep a local school open during the lockdown, Lucina de Macco shares the challenges of an international nonprofit focused on girls education in the global South.

Lucina Di Meco (01:19):
Room to Read is an international nonprofit that develops and implements educational programs in Africa and Asia and other countries around the world. We try and prevent child marriage, unwanted pregnancies, and gender based violence, and really see the need to help girls stay in school as long as they wish to stay in, for sure until the age of 18. The way we do that is working and collaborating directly with the public schools. We work in some of the most underprivileged communities around the world where we hire staff and local mentors to work with the girls in small groups, peer mentoring groups, and one-on-one mentoring, where we really get to discuss with the girls their challenges, their dreams, and how to prepare them for their futures. 
And so when the pandemic hit, we had to entirely rethink our approach. We could no longer get into public schools. We could no longer have meetings with the parents, with home visits, and we wanted to understand what were the challenges they were facing and see how best we could support them. What we know from previous health crisis, for example, Ebola, is that the girls face even greater risk of child marriage, of dropping out of school or becoming victims of gender-based violence within the family or being forced early into marriage. So we knew that our work was more than ever needed. And however, we have been thinking how were we going to support those girls? Our social mobilizers, who are mentors that support certain cohorts of girls, reached out the girls normally on landline phones, because that was the medium that was most available to them and started providing individual remote mentoring, give them very basic information of how to stay safe during COVID and understand if they had heard the family talk about child marriage and see what we can do about that. If they had concerns regarding their ability to go back to schools, and therefore we try to provide support and advice.

[SFX: Phone calls girl/mentor]

Lucina Di Meco (04:05):
One of the interesting things about the pandemic was that they all had different realities and therefore all developed slightly different programs in responding to the pandemic. In Bangladesh, we have been able to support and design television programming specifically for girls that was then broadcasted on the national television. And so trying and continuing remotely the kind of support and lessons that we will be providing in person in their classrooms.

[SFX: Bangaladesh TV educational program]

Lucina Di Meco (04:54):
In Nepal, for example, we have started the original storytelling type of programs where we have the girls understand some of the challenges that they might be facing and some of the responses that might be possible for them based on those fictional characters and they sympathize with and empathize with.

[SFX: Audio story, Nepal]

Lucina Di Meco (05:24):
One of the most difficult things that we have to grapple with in the beginning of the pandemic was really a feeling of uncertainty. How long was the situation going to last? 
As a leader in the organization, I had to make sure that the country officers had the resources they needed, both in terms of technical assistance, as well as in terms of financial resources to do what they needed to do. These are some things where the pandemic offered us a hidden possibility beyond the short-term and looking into more long-term actions.

Sara Marinelli (06:05):
Being a radio person, I got excited by Lucina’s description of using broadcast media and audio storytelling to reach out to girls and their parents and sustain their education in a time of isolation. She explains that despite the crisis, the urgency of the situation compelled her and their organization to look at the essential parts of their program and innovate their offerings in ways they had not imagined. 
Lucina also acknowledges some of the opportunities and shifts of perspective that the pandemic created in her work as a researcher and an advocate for women's political leadership.
In a world, increasingly relying on online meetings and virtual presence, her research aims at spreading greater awareness on the insidious relationship between women in politics and social media.

Lucina Di Meco (07:01):
My interests to work in this field of international development and gender equality really started from an understanding that there were some structural inequalities that needed to change, and that I could do my part to overcome it. I always hoped to marry my work and experience in gender equality globally with my awareness of how politics work, and in the last years I have been thrilled to be able to do so as a researcher and particularly researching the challenges that women in politics face, how women in politics are being targeted by online disinformation campaigns, to make sure that women do not enter the political stage in countries where democracy is at risk.

[SFX: LDM’s speech at conference] (08:04):

“Women only hold 24% of parliamentary seats and make up only 16% of people in news on politics and government globally. At this pace, it will take us more than a century to get to gender equality. What can we do to speed up progress?”

Lucina Di Meco (08:27):
This work has been very interesting. I was hoping to be able to launch a series of initiatives. We had many events in mind for 2020, and everything changed with the pandemic, both the funding opportunities and interest from potential funders in starting something new, as well as the possibilities, for example, of doing programs in person. On the other hand, the pandemic made it easier to connect with people.  So I was able to launch a partnership with Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California, and we worked on a letter to hold Facebook accountable and demand more when it comes really to the treatment that women and women in politics receive on their platform

[SFX: LDM’s speech at conference] (09:28):

“Female candidates are more likely targets of vicious, personal attacks carried out by fake news accounts. It is that bad.”

Lucina Di Meco (09:42):
The work with representative Jackie Speier I certainly didn't expect that a politician of that level would respond to an email from someone she hardly knows or doesn't know, and that happened.  And it was quite fantastic.
I am this kind of person that keeps trying no matter what. And so is this something that I will also remember about this year.

Sara Marinelli (10:18):
Meanwhile, the pandemic was raging in Italy, and I asked Lucina how she was coping with the news, what kind of anxieties she had for her people and how it affected her emotionally.

Lucina Di Meco (10:35):
It felt very strange to be an Italian here when COVID started in Italy, and then in Europe. My family is in Italy. Many, many friends are in Italy. I was of course worried, particularly my mother is over 70. She lives alone, although my sister's nearby. And there certainly was a concern. What happens if she gets sick? And then there was also concern for us. My husband and I are here with our nine years old, and, you know, we started thinking what happens if we get sick to the point that we cannot take care of him? Whom can we ask? And the list is relatively short. Because it's not so easy to demand something, something so big from people you might've met a few years ago. That really led us to reflect on the pros and cons of this type of lifestyle where certainly you're very free as an immigrant or someone that doesn't have special ties, so there is a lot of freedom in that. And there is certainly also costs.

In some ways I felt that the hashtag “Andrà tutto bene” in the bigger picture was really a good one to really reflect on the feeling that I also have and had about Italy, that we overcame so many challenges throughout history and that the greatest resource is our creativity, our energy. I was so impressed to see people singing from balconies. Then you can read it in the news. And all of a sudden it was flagged on my Facebook timeline from American friends and Japanese friends. And everyone was so surprised. And at the same time as an Italian, I was not surprised.

[SFX: Music from balconies} (13:03):

Lucina Di Meco (13:04):
It was really heartwarming to know that there was a country that even in the struggle and even in the isolation, didn't lose this ability to love life.
The solidarity, the solution orientation it demonstrated in the early days of the crisis. And I hope that we do not lose that. I hope that we can continue being able to look at the future as a better place.

Sara Marinelli (13:55):
I also wondered if in the hardest moments she has ever questioned her choices and her sense of belonging.

Lucina Di Meco (14:04):
I haven't been questioning my life choices. I do. I do every once in a while. I did see the pandemic as an opportunity to think more about Italy, about what it had to offer, what was going to happen afterwards. I can't imagine a world where I would have to choose.  As an Italian, I'm lucky now to have been able to naturalize and become a U.S. citizen without having to renounce my Italian citizenship. Had I had to do it, I would have not naturalized. This, I know for sure. Now that I am both, and to some extent, and in very different ways, I feel both Italian and American, I don't know that I could ever make a choice. I also know that I will always be an Italian in so many ways. And, um, and I'm happy about it. 
There's just some, some deepest belonging or some deepest pride about, about being Italian that never leaves you. For me, is such an integral part of who I am, that in some ways it didn't really matter. Whether I go to Italy once a year, as I've gotten used to doing recently, or much less.  And in this respect, I don't necessarily feel it needs to be reinforced. I enjoy reinforcing it and nurturing it, but it's always there. It's always there with me.

Sara Marinelli (15:50):
"It's always there with me," I have heard this powerful statement of recognizing your roots inside you, no matter where you go, and for how long, for many immigrants. There is an undeniable, perhaps instinctual sense of belonging that you hold onto. Even if you are apart from your home country for a hundred years. It can manifest in different ways and a different degrees, and he can be prideful, joyful or painful, depending on who you are and where your story is. 
What I see in Lucina’s personality and engagement in the local international community is the optimism and trust that you can have a role in the global world, starting from where you are, where you come from and what that place has given you. 
As a final thought, I asked Lucina to imagine writing a letter to Italy.

Lucina Di Meco (16:52):
If I had to write a letter to Italy, I would say: I'm there with you. I'm a resource to you now and ever. As an Italian living abroad, I always feel a certain way to wanting to represent my country of wanting people that know me also feel, wow, this Italian person is great. And knowing that this represents Italy too, the same as , you know, you have the great teachers and artworks in museums all over the world, you have all kinds of people that are doing pretty fantastic things all over the world. And that's representing Italy too whether we are there or not. 
If there is something that COVID can give us, even in the understanding that so much has been lost, and so many lives, so many opportunities are being lost. If there is something that it can give us is this idea that we need to build a better future. And we can do that.

Sara Marinelli (18:08):
Lucina Di Meco continues her work and passion for gender equality, and just recently, she has been recognized by Apolitical as one of the 100 most influential people in gender policy in 2021. You can find out more about her pioneering research at www.she-persisted.org. And you can find out more about Room to Read at the website, www.roomtoread.org. 

In the next segment. I am speaking with the Consul General of Italy in San Francisco, Lorenzo Ortona. After almost five years in office, he's concluding his mandate at the end of June, 2021. Join me for a conversation about the hardest challenges he and his team had to face in support of the Italian community in the Consulate jurisdiction and for his imaginary letter, not only to Italy, but to the Italian community, to whom he's saying goodbye.

“Letters to Italy” is produced, edited, and hosted by me, Sara Marinelli.
This series was made possible thanks to the support of COMITES of San Francisco and the Italian Consulate of San Francisco with funding from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. I am grateful for their support. 
Thanks for listening.

© Sara Marinelli