The “Upendo” Educational Community welcomes minors who, for a period of their lives, need a safe and welcoming environment that can meet their emotional and educational needs. The main goal is to provide children with a serene and family-like setting that promotes their psychophysical well-being and the development of their potential.

The facility, located in Melito di Napoli, in a property confiscated from organized crime, aims to offer minors a place where they feel safe, accompanying them on their growth path and facilitating the maintenance or restoration of relationships with their family of origin, where possible. The educational team works in close collaboration with social services and the local network to promote a harmonious social integration.

Upendo is committed to promoting educational, cultural, and recreational activities that can stimulate the autonomy and resilience of the children, providing them with the necessary tools to build a better future.

The Upendo Community aims to:

• Welcome: the minor in a protective, serene, welcoming, and highly educational environment in which to live, which allows them to express their needs and requirements through the establishment of a positive family climate.
• Support: minors in a path of personal growth, nurture relationships with their families of origin, where possible, and build a solid socio-emotional network.  
• Facilitate: the development of resilience capacity, to strengthen and develop their individuality by promoting a normal growth process.  
• Help: the minor in fulfilling their school obligation through networking with the Institutes of the territory.
• Promote: socialization and inclusion through individualized projects in collaboration with local realities.
• Guarantee: to the child temporarily removed from the family unit the necessary support for returning to the family; to the child for whom it is not possible to return to the family, the immediate activation of the bureaucratic process of insertion in a foster or adoptive family