Home Free for All!

In the Val d'Orcia and Amiata territory, where Casa Costa Foundation has operated for years, there exists an organization that has worked daily since 2010 to offer protection and dignity to women victims of violence: the Centro Antiviolenza Donna Amiata Val d'Orcia.

A network of volunteer operators, lawyers, and psychologists who guarantee listening, legal and psychological counseling, and accompaniment on paths out of violence. Capillary work made of constant presence, competence, and absolute respect for confidentiality.

Beyond emergency: the home as a space for reconstruction

But leaving violence behind doesn't only mean finding immediate protection. It means rebuilding everyday life, recovering autonomy, relearning to plan for the future.

This is why second-stage housing exists: spaces where women who have already faced the emergency can stay for the time needed to regain balance and independence. Places that are not simple shelters, but real homes where they can start over.

The facility managed by Centro Antiviolenza DAV in collaboration with Associazione Amica Donna welcomes up to two family units: women with their children, often small, who have experienced psychological, physical, and economic violence.

Here they can stay for up to six months, in an apartment equipped with bedrooms, a shared kitchen, spaces to live as normal a daily life as possible. It's a fundamental passage: the woman gains independence in many aspects of life, the children experience safe routines, far from the tensions and fears that marked their early years.

Children: rebuilding trust and normality

For the children hosted in the house, this time represents a precious opportunity. They are children and teenagers who have lived with violence at home, who have seen and suffered. They need to rediscover a normality made of small things: going to school peacefully, playing, having their own space, being helped with homework, participating in recreational activities.

We called this project "Home Free for All!" because that's exactly what we want: for that home to become the safe base from which to shout that fear is over, that you can come out, that you can start playing again. A home that frees mothers from violence and children from nightmare. It frees everyone, truly.

This is why the Centro Antiviolenza activates specific professional figures – educators, psychologists, pedagogists – who work with them to rebuild trust and security. Educational support is not extra, it's an essential part of the journey out of violence for the entire family unit.

But for a second-stage housing to truly work, concrete things are also needed: basic necessities, play and educational materials for children, space maintenance, furniture, furnishings. Resources are needed to ensure that home is truly welcoming, that nothing is missing, that women and their children can focus on reconstruction without worrying about the rest.

Why Casa Costa Foundation supports this project

We chose to support this project because we recognize in the work of Centro Antiviolenza DAV an approach we deeply share: hospitality as a practice of dignity, not charity.

As those who know what it means to open doors and care for people, we understand the value of a space that is not only functional, but warm, attentive, capable of making people feel safe. A home where it's possible to start over.

Our contribution will support both direct economic support for the children hosted in the facility – guaranteeing educational materials, recreational activities, basic necessities – and the awareness campaign that the Centro Antiviolenza carries forward in the territory to make its services known and continue the cultural prevention work against gender-based violence.

Work of competence and humanity

We know that the work of Centro Antiviolenza DAV is made of competence, continuous training, networking with other centers and institutions. We know that the operators and professionals involved work with rigor and humanity. And we know that results are measured in lives that restart, in children who smile again, in women who rediscover their strength.

In the last two years, the second-stage housing has hosted five women with eight children and two single women. Behind these numbers are individual journeys, different stories, but a common possibility: that of rebuilding autonomy and self-determination in a protected place, accompanied by competent and respectful people.

Supporting this project means for us contributing to an essential piece of territorial welfare, to a service that should never be missing in any community. It means recognizing that true hospitality is also measured in a community's ability to care for those who are most vulnerable. And it means honoring the territory where we operate, supporting those who work every day so that no woman has to feel alone facing violence.