If the sports sector of Sitav Rugby Lyons is currently recharging its batteries in view of the next season, the Juventus club is continuing its social activities, with a new initiative launched in April and which once again highlights the attention towards the last and marginalized: together with Spes Borgotrebbia ASD Rugby Lyons is at the center of the newborn “Carceri Project”, which has the aim of bringing sports practice to the Piacenza penitentiary centre.
The “Carceri Project” is made possible by a regional tender, awarded by the Juventus club in “consortium” with Spes Borgotrebbia, leader of the project. Once a week, the educators of Rugby Lyons go to the prison to let the inmates practice rugby: Tuesday is the day of football training conducted by Spes Borgotrebbia, while on Thursday the inmates try their hand at rugby. The project involves the Juventus technicians Tino Paoletti and Jacopo Salvetti, coaches of the first team and Under 18 respectively, who took over from the first team players Luca Petillo and Josè Chico involved in the first months of the project. The regional tender provides economic coverage for a period of 18 months, in which the inmates will engage in this important social activity. The objective, shared with the director of the Piacenza prison Maria Gabriella Lusi, is to facilitate the reintegration of prisoners into society with the help of sport and the values of rugby.
The head of the Social Commitment Area of the Juventus club is the vice-president Paolo Via, who took care of participation in the tenders together with the councilor Gianluca Groppelli and the administrative manager Cinzia Fanciullo. The two Juventus managers explained these initiatives and their value: “As a high-level sporting reality, we do not want our name to be remembered only for the victories on the field or for the euphoria of the Rugby Festival, but we want our reality be recognized for what we give back to the community. Our company was born from a group of students, who believed in the potential and values of rugby: we do not want to forget their teaching and use our strengths to carry forward this ambitious project. We have found maximum availability and support from the director of the structure Maria Gabriella Lusi, with whom we also expressed a small dream: at the end of this 18-month journey, if conditions permit, we would like to have the inmates who participated in the project play a match with one of our teams, as culmination of what has been done and to raise awareness among our kids. In this sense, we are proud that the proposed initiatives have found positive feedback from the players and coaches of the first team, who with their example can make an important contribution to the success of the projects. The ‘Carceri Project’ supports our other social initiative of the ‘Inclusion Project’, also financed by a regional tender for this year and which has seen as its most tangible fruit our Integrated Rugby team ‘I Brancaleoni’, which in the season just ended he played his first matches”.
