Who is Bologna Per Gaza?

Bologna Per Gaza is a grassroots initiative born in response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine. We are individuals and local groups who came together, not as an organisation, but as people moved by love, urgency, and a shared sense of responsibility. The network emerged between August and October 2024 to respond to the needs of families evacuated from Gaza and welcomed to Bologna since 2023. Over this time, a close-knit community of around 200 people—mostly women and children—has formed, growing steadily due to the ongoing genocide.

Our first contact with these families as volunteers took place in hospital settings, and what began as hospital visits soon developed into relationships founded on trust, care, and shared humanity. We realised that medical care alone could not address the full scope of healing; displacement uproots people from their homes, communities, and routines, making the creation of a supportive community essential. In response, we began gathering every Saturday at the Katia Bertasi Community Centre, gradually expanding to other community spaces where families could navigate and inhabit the city through trust, care, and shared experience.

These weekly meetings offer a wide range of activities for children and adults, including creative workshops in painting, drawing, arts and crafts, play-based and movement games, creative writing, collective storytelling, skateboarding, accessible activities for children with limited mobility or prosthetics, and somatic and body-awareness practices through dance and Dabke. In December 2024, we began collaborating with Music and Resilience to offer group music therapy sessions focused on circle formation, using instruments and vocal techniques.

Over time, we realised that what matters most are not the activities themselves but the spirit that drives them. These gatherings have created spaces of warmth, continuity, and emotional safety, allowing people to recover a sense of security and belonging. The community has become the heart of our work, helping children reclaim their childhood through play, creativity, and connection, while offering adults a space to breathe, share, and begin processing the weight of their experiences.

This foundation has enabled the development of a community-based psychosocial support project for adults using healing circles, where participants engage in dialogue and collective storytelling, creating safe circuits of care that soften pain through mutual support.

Two years into the genocide, we are called to reflect on the fate of humanity, Western societal structures, and the meaning of democracy, striving to transform frustration into care, accountability, and action. The personal stories of those we accompany remain our most precious gift, and over time the community has grown into a space of shared healing, offering moments of relief, dignity, and hope.

Bologna per Gaza continues to expand, sustained by the dedication and collective effort of those who choose to listen and be guided by the voice of Gaza, and we are deeply grateful to Kites4Palestine for standing beside us with solidarity and care.

With love, and with our hearts in Gaza.