The holidays can have a fuller meaning when a simple gesture is transformed into real help. This year, three campaigns on
LAND: cinema (and hope) for Palestinian students
The first project is called Land and is promoted by ACS ONG in collaboration with the Cinema In Green festival. The initiative includes a two-month
During the training, young Palestinians will acquire professional skills in documentary filmmaking and storytelling through lectures, master classes and the practical making of short films or documentary videos on social and environmental issues, possibly related to their home territories. The works produced will then be presented in a dedicated section of the fourth edition of the Cinema In Verde festival, scheduled for September at the Botanical Garden in Rome.
The campaign aims to raise the necessary funds to cover participants’ airfare, visas and insurance. By partnering with Bethlehem University‘s Start Your Business incubator, the students will be able to continue the course once they return to Palestine, with the goal of creating small audiovisual businesses that are also connected to the Italian production system.
Psychotherapy Suspended 3.0: psychological well-being against gender-based violence
The second crowdfunding is Psychotherapy Sospesa 3.0, promoted by the Limen Association and the Lucha y Siesta Women’s House Association. Inspired by the Neapolitan tradition of suspended coffee, the project is now in its third edition having already activated 56 therapeutic paths since 2021 thanks to the support of more than 1,000 donors in previous editions.
The initiative makes accessible long-term psychological support pathways for women, trans people and minors who have exited, are exiting or want to exit situations of violence. The project is developed in a network with Anti-Violence Centreto include psychological work in a complex intake that also includes economic, housing, medical and vocational retraining aspects.
Cartoonist Zerocalcare supported the initiative again this year by producing a dedicated panel.
Trip to the Lighthouse: saving a literary festival
The third project is the literary festival Gita al Faro, sponsored by the Associazione per Santo Stefano in Ventotene Onlus. After fourteen years of uninterrupted activity, the fifteenth edition scheduled for June 2026 is in danger of not happening due to decreased funding. The festival takes place on the island of Ventotene and takes the form of an artistic residency where writers visit the places of confinement and the former prison of Santo Stefano, giving back through words what the island has given them.
Since 2012, the festival has hosted more than eighty authors including Stefania Auci, Edoardo Albinati, Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Nicola Lagioia, Michela Murgia, Emanuele Trevi, and Wu Ming 1. Each year invited writers read stories inspired by the island during the final evening at the archaeological garden with the lighthouse in the background. These stories are then published by the Ultima Spiaggia bookstore and publishing house in Ventotene.
The value of participation
Cinema, psychology, literature: three different fields united by the same need to build concrete answers to real needs from below. At a time in history when public funding for culture and social work is shrinking, crowdfunding confirms itself as a democratic tool capable of mobilising communities around valuable projects, turning the Christmas season into an opportunity to support those who work every day for a more just and inclusive future.
