After more than twenty years since the last time, the bell on the first day of school rang again this morning in Ginostra, a hamlet of the municipality of Lipari in the Aeolian Islands, to welcome Aysha, the little girl who, the only pupil in the village, will attend the first class of primary school.
Visibly excited, with a backpack on her shoulders and accompanied by her parents, the little girl was welcomed by the teacher Laura Mongi who will follow her throughout her school career. The reopening of the school is the result of the perseverance of Aysha’s parents, Rafic Banzine and Monica Abbate, who fought also counting on the valid support of the municipal administration of Lipari and the manager of the comprehensive Aeolian Islands, who pleaded the cause with the provincial school education. And last but not least, Archbishop Giovanni Accolla who made one of the recently renovated rooms of the church of San Vincenzo Ferreri available, free of charge, as a classroom.
An event for the hamlet of the island of Stromboli which during the winter has around forty inhabitants.
«Even what seems impossible is possible»
“This result is very important for our little girl and for the very place where we are,” her father tells AGI. «We are happy. Creating a place – he adds – where for years it was thought that a school couldn’t be built gives hope that even what seems impossible is actually possible.”