Document elaborated by Vincenzo Grauso in occasion of the conference " Catholic operators for the social".

I would like, first of all, to welcome all the presents and, in particular to thank Samuele Ciambriello for being so kind as to invite me to this meeting.

I worked as a social operator for twenty years and I have recently resigned from the cooperative I had been collaborating with and from the roles I used to play both within the limits of the society and of their projects. In certain cases giving up one's tasks and resignation may sometimes be a way to readapt one's engament since one's future may depend mainly on the ability to think over the present and revise the past creatively. like many other people, I really need to know, understand and find my way about in social issues, in particular those\linked to the youth world which are studded with phenomena in rapid evolution.

These years I have been working with enthusiasm in activities aimed at the prevention of the social uneasiness. On the example of a methodology already experimented in other European countries, I have tried to put a plan into practice aiming at the realization of a net of connection among the agencies of the territory engaged in programs of permanent education. Withe the financial help of private people I have elaborated and taken care of formation projects aiming at the socio-educational reintegration of young people at risk and I have taken part in the elaboration of the project for the realization of the residential house

" Il Ponte" of Nisida: a reception community for under-age youth coming from penal circuit, one of the first arisen in Italy.

This last experience assumed a particular meaning for me because it was experienced in a place that was at the centre of experimental projects in favour of under-age yputh at risk.Therefore I was a witness and observer of juvenile deviance phenomena on an explosive territory like Naples as far as violence and crime are concerned.

It is well-known that social problems are complex by nature so they require a great variety of competences that are expected to complement each other. This plurality is important not only for economic

reasons but also for educational ones.

In accordance with the instructions of " The Green Book " of the European Committee the innovative value, which all the agencies of the social privacy had given to organizational structures of reception centres, was supposed to be reasserted. In such a sense a series of competences had developed within an explorative run that had already been implemented in the districts of our city since our operators had\started to reflect upon the reasons and  needs of all social ranges at exclusion risk.

After the political opportunity to celebrate the history of the city and the new Neapolitan Renaissance, as social operators we realized that there were different kinds of problems striking the sensibility of people deeply so we felt the need to discuss not so much subjects and\plans as the expectations of all the components of civil society: boys, families and workers.Young people and teenagers engaged in our training courses appeared  strongly demotivated and did not succeed in undestanding their roles in the creation of negative attitudes and distorted perception of reality.They were deeply suspicious of all those events which offered them the opportunity to make their choice of their own and change their lives because they perceived social reality with no culture, economic resources and suitable Institutions that were able to fight against the camorra power.It was, therefore, necessary to connect spaces, times and  levels of individual sensibility with the contemporaneity of productive and constructive social events.

In the course of our  educational activities as social operators we were aware of the need to promote a process of development of universally shared moral feelings such as, for example, the concept of work as a positive value of personal and social support.

It was interpersonal relations which needed ì, above all, to change and this change would be the subject of an impartial research from everybody because, after a renewal, there is always a sequence of conflicting images and memories.

The political institutions proved unable to understand the complexity and sensibility of our social fabric through the interpretation of our consolidated and heterogeneous experiences letting them merge with a unitary institutional project.

I am convinced that as social operators we are paying the price of an old and obsolete political culture as for conception and purpose, which is certainly not in keeping with today's needs since it lacks a general vision .

Little money is spent in Naples for social emergencies  and even badly; the two things are held together. The local government spends as little as possible and they often invest money in the wrong way; as a result we get a bad  service at a relatively low cost.

The dialogue of the political subjects with the social operators is non-existent, nearly always mediated by intermediary figures of scarce competence and quality, as has often pointed out by the observers of our field. Social operators are badly paid and dissatisfied, they lend their service in structures where one feels the full weight od decay and illegality.

All this comes to a shape as a destructive spiral that shatters and frustrates the interventions and the value of our work and ideas. Therefore, no wonder that there is a sort of legitimation of institutional

rules of civil cohabitation and that all this constitutes the frame within which the behaviour of the individual citizens and the youth is placed.

It goes without saying that the camorra organizations have gained new sap and energy to consolidate their ranks and renew authority and power from such a situation. As things stand, it results difficult for a social operator to perceive the sense of a turning and change or to find out a way to follow for the future because it is hard even to claim the right that young people need a better and a larger amount of education. The certainty that nowadays our future and that of new generations depends on the education of young people has been completely neglected or, even worse,ignored.

This state of things jeopardizes our possibility of market and sociability in an irreversible way andp revents our cultural heritage from being appreciated in a suitable way.

We can come to the conclusion, as would say George Wells, that the history of our city becomes more and more a run among education and catastrophe.