Lindsay Marie Morris

Founded in 1998 in Stone Park, Illinois, Casa Italia aims to be the home for all Italian-American organizations in the Chicago area. Through cultural enrichment activities, presentations, and exhibitions, the organization pursues a mission of preserving the past, celebrating Italian heritage, and ensuring the passage of values to future generations. 

The 501(c)3 nonprofit has embarked on a new chapter as it undergoes facility renovations. Once the upgrades are complete, its Italian Cultural Center will fully reopen to showcase museums and exhibits, including the Sicilian Heritage Museum, Italian-American Veterans Museum, and an impressive 1:100 scale hand-carved model of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Meanwhile, the community is invited to attend author events and film screenings, make Carnevale masks, dig into genealogy, play in the bocce league, and dance at Ballo Sotto le Stelle. The organization also offers language classes for adults and children. Casa Italia's Kids Camp, also known as La lingua e cultura d'Italia, is a two-week Italian culture and language immersion program where youth can engage in games, songs, sports, skits, cooking, and formal and informal language lessons.

I spoke with Casa Italia Chairman Peter Volpe about the organization. Peter grew up on the northwest side of Chicago with family from Sicily and Bari. His Sicilian family hails from Porticello, which happens to be where my family and Gaetano and Concetta of The Last Letter from Sicily are from.  

Peter shared more about Casa Italia's cultural center, the organization's offerings, and what he hopes to give back to the community. 

 

 

How and why was Casa Italia founded?

Twenty-five years ago, the Scalabrini Order was going to abandon the property. A small group of Italian business people, headed by the Turano family, said, "Don't let that happen. There's just too much history here. Rent it to us. We'll take care of the property. We're going to perpetuate our culture. We're going to bring museums, and we are going to be the home for all Italian American organizations."

 

That's how it all started. The Turanos, Gambinos, Stramaglias, Brunos, and others got involved in bringing Casa Italia together.

 

If you look at the Chicago environment for Italian Americans, we have a million organizations, but we don't work as a single power. And that's our vision: We're trying to get everybody together so we can have a unified voice and represent our community with the true power that we possess. The Italian American population is one of the largest in Chicago as far as immigration goes, and we are just too independent of each other. All our organizations have different purposes; if we just keep inside our lanes and follow our direction on what we want to accomplish, we could do so many good things together.

 

Casa Italia has hosted art shows in its gallery.

Where do things stand with your facility upgrades?

We had 19 acres of land and six big buildings that needed renovation. But our grounds are phenomenal, and we can hold festivals and host events.

 

The problem is that the buildings became so deteriorated that they were no longer up to code. We didn't have the resources to fix them. So, the village of Stone Park ended up purchasing the property, and now they're our new landlord.

 

While we no longer control the 19 acres, we have our two most important buildings. One is our cultural center, which houses all our museums, our library, and a nice meeting room. The other is our community center, which has a banquet hall, a kitchen, several offices on the second floor, and a gymnasium.

 

We got both of those properties from the village under a long-term lease, and they will do the exterior renovations of the cultural center. There will be a new roof, windows, fire escapes, and brickwork. We are charged with bringing the interior and exterior of the other property, the community center, up to code.

 

We are in the middle of a fundraiser, for which we've raised over $600,000 already. They've taken the sledgehammers and air hammers and are going to work on it.

 

There's an incredible amount of work that's going to be done. In how we envision that property, we hope to  bring the gym floor up to the main floor level. If we can accomplish this we're going to expand our banquet facilities to hold 400 people. We'll have a full-sized kitchen. And on the second floor, there will be a conference room and storage space for our clubs where they have mini offices.

 

We're attacking one building at a time. The community center is our focus right now because it brings in the revenue we need to sustain ourselves. We expect that to be done in late summer of this year. Once we can get that done and raise additional capital, we will switch our efforts to the cultural center.

 

We're looking for donors; they don't have to just be from the Chicagoland area. We invite anybody who wants to see our culture continue and propagate to look us up. 

 

Casa Italia Kids Camp provides language and culture immersion.

Tell us about your language offerings.

We're offering language classes at five different sites all over the city area to make it convenient. The classes range from conversational Italian (if you're going to travel) to beginner level and up. We have some great instructors who are professors of the Italian language.

 

With COVID, we expanded that a little bit and did a lot virtually, and that stayed with us. We're still doing both in-person and virtual.

 

Our summer Kids Camp is coming up. It's two weeks before the 4th of July, and it's a 10-day immersion for the children to learn everything from language to traditions to cooking to gardening and everything about who we are as Italian Americans.

 

Enjoy a game with Casa Italia's bocce league.

What do you hope to share with members of your community?

We want to support individual clubs and organizations by being their home. We don't charge a membership fee. Just come and be part of Casa Italia and host your meetings and events with us. We welcome you and want you there. We are not there to compete with you; we're here to work with you.

 

As far as the neighbors and the people in the area are concerned, "Hey, get to know us." Our facility is off the beaten path. It's not on the main street. It's in a neighborhood. It's one square block—that's how huge it is. Come on in and see it.

 

Everybody who comes can't believe what we have there. The richness of our library, the artifacts in all our museums, the information we share, the events we do… it blows their minds when they see what's going on, and they never knew it was there.  

 

 

 

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It's the quintessentially Sicilian image: A brightly colored wooden cart pulled by a donkey. While the Sicilian cart is largely a thing of the past, the plight of donkeys throughout Europe remains a pressing issue. Once vital to agriculture and transportation, these animals face hardships ranging from overwork in tourism to neglect due to misunderstandings about their needs.

 

Enter Il Rifugio degli Asinelli. With a mission of educating the public, improving donkey welfare, and healing physical and emotional scars, this Italian subsidiary of UK-based The Donkey Sanctuary serves as a lifeline for donkeys from across Europe facing neglect, abuse, and misunderstanding.

 

I recently caught up with Il Rifugio degli Asinelli Communications & FR Officer Ilaria Ruzza, who shared more about this important organization and the threats donkeys face. She additionally shed light on surprising donkey facts and how the public can get involved in caring and advocating for this equine species. 

 

 

What inspired the establishment of Il Rifugio degli Asinelli?

Il Rifugio is the Italian subsidiary of the international animal welfare charity The Donkey Sanctuary, founded in 1969 in the UK by Dr. Elisabeth Svendsen MBE. Our location in Italy puts us in a good position geographically to welcome donkeys from different countries across Europe. Over the years, we have welcomed animals from Greece, Romania, France, Switzerland, and, of course, Italy.

 

What are some of the key threats donkeys face?

While some donkeys suffer from neglect and abuse, poor welfare is often because of misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge about how to care for them. Sometimes, they are considered "small horses," but donkeys are very different in their behavior and physical needs. In places popular with tourists, donkeys are still used to generate income, and this means they can be overworked or kept in poor conditions, as is also the case for animals involved in the milk and breeding industry.

 

Can you share some success stories of donkeys rehabilitated at the refuge?

Ardito was born in 2003 and comes from the Oropa Valley, a few kilometers from Il Rifugio. He lived for over a year, locked in a stable, without ever seeing the light of day because his elderly owner was no longer able to properly care for him. When we went to retrieve him in 2016, he was underweight, with long hooves and covered in parasites, but he already had a wonderful character: the only thing that hasn't changed, so much so that he was renamed the "Gentle Giant." He constantly seeks the attention of humans and loves to be scratched on the withers. Living inside a closed environment and without the necessary air circulation for a prolonged period of time led him to develop a respiratory condition comparable to human asthma. Animals affected by this pathology require greater precautions (stable beds made of dust-free wood chips and not straw, administration of specific high-quality feed). He has created strong bonds of friendship with Lucio and Galileo, his stablemates, but he still has a good balance with all the other animals in the group in which he lives.

 

Ardito was rescued from a state of neglect.

 

In 2013, we rescued 34 animals coming from Italy's biggest-ever equine seizure in Colleferro, near Rome. This included 14 mules and hinnies and 12 pregnant jennies, leading to another 12 foals over the following year. It was February, and we had heavy snow. All our staff worked very hard to enlarge our quarantine area, as we were not used to welcoming so many animals at a time. Before arriving at Il Rifugio, they were completely abandoned. Sadly, many animals were already dead or died during the seizure because of starvation or severe, untreated wounds—with no trust at all towards humans. We've been rebuilding that bond every single day since they arrived, healing both physical and emotional wounds. There's still a long way to go, but when they approach to receive a scratch, we know we're going in the right direction.

 

What are your main challenges in caring for over 100 animals from various countries?

We currently have 106 resident animals (93 donkeys, 12 mules and hinnies, and one pony). They all come from different backgrounds. They can't tell us about what they have been through, so we have to get to know and understand every single animal in his or her behavior and character, besides their specific physical needs (diet, conditions, etc.).

 

How do you ensure well-being and health at the refuge?

Our qualified, experienced and trained staff care for our animals every single day, while our veterinarian is on site three days a week and in case of emergency as well. Our farm schedule includes periodic visits, dental checks, vaccines, hooves trimming and grooming, and weighing on a monthly basis. Individual diets are reviewed each month to ensure welfare and avoid possible conditions stemming from a wrong alimentation. Animals with behavioral problems are followed through specific sessions by trained personnel so that they can be more comfortable during health checks.

 

What might people be surprised to learn about donkeys?

Donkeys are incredibly smart and intelligent animals and, like other equines, have a keen fight-or-flight nervous system response. However, compared with horses, the donkey's fight-defense mechanism is more easily engaged and can be seen in donkeys displaying behavior in the range of standing their ground when faced with a threat. Donkeys may also freeze when faced with a threat, which can be mistaken for them being stubborn when, in fact, they may just be reacting to a novel situation. Their varied behavioral responses demonstrate how donkeys need to be treated differently from horses and not just seen as a smaller, longer-eared version of a horse. They create strong and long-lasting (even lifelong) bonds with other donkeys, usually in a pair but sometimes in groups of three or four. When we move a donkey from one stable to another for a vet visit, we always keep them with their bonded friend(s); otherwise, they can be scared, deeply stressed, or even become aggressive. Bonded friends stay close to each other during any activity: grazing, eating, running, scratching, etc.

 

What kind of training and education programs do you offer?

On occasion, we offer public courses, both online and on-site, facilitated by our Training and Educational department, completely free of charge, focusing on the basic information and knowledge for donkeys' welfare. We also offer courses on a wide range of subjects through The Donkey Academy, which is a collaborative online learning platform and knowledge exchange developed and run by our own experts at The Donkey Sanctuary. The self-paced courses are designed to teach new skills or enhance existing ones. They cover basic welfare and wellbeing, behavior and nutrition for donkey owners and guardians, right through to specialist courses that include donkey behavior for veterinary professionals, clinical examination, and dental and farriery care.

The Donkey Academy is also free of charge and offers courses in English and Spanish, both to professionals (e.g., veterinarians, dental technicians, vet nurses, paraveterinarians, and farriers) and to laypeople (i.e., donkey owners, guardians, people interested in donkey care and welfare). The virtual learning environment also hosts training pathways for The Donkey Sanctuary employees, designed to ensure that all of our donkeys will benefit from a consistent and predictable approach to their care. The Donkey Sanctuary is also involved in collaboration with different Universities, Colleges, and professional associations in several countries, offering tailored education programs to students and professionals.

Recently, two courses in Italian have been launched: one is dedicated to our Il Rifugio employees, while the other is open to the public, offering owners, perspective owners, guardians, and other interested people all the information needed to properly care for donkeys and enhance their welfare and well-being.

 

What key activities and facilities are available at the refuge?

Upon appointment, we welcome groups, both children and adults, for guided tours, which last approximately a couple of hours: we explain our mission, the needs of a healthy donkey, and what he looks like so that people may be able to recognize a donkey in distress and report it to authorities if they ever see one. Three different groups of vulnerable and disabled people come once a week to benefit from our free DAA (Donkey Assisted Activities) program. They spend some time in our paddocks with our animals (who are never tied and always free to move around), shadowed by our qualified staff. We have an Info Point where visitors can ask questions, make a donation, and adopt a donkey.

 

Can you explain the process of adopting or fostering a donkey or mule?

Distance adoption is a symbolic way to help all donkeys. With a yearly donation of 36,00 EUR, you will contribute to the well-being of all animals living at Il Rifugio. Our program includes seven donkeys (Alin, Ardito, Agostino, Clementina, Filippo, Galileo, and Ombra) and one mule (Marco). Adopters will receive a special certificate with a picture of the adopted donkey, a welcome letter, and the donkey's ID with all their information. We then send three newsletters a year (Spring, Summer, and Christmas) where we provide updates on the adoption scheme animals, which can be seen during our open days to the public.

 

We currently have 43 donkeys living in Guardian Homes. People interested in joining our Guardian Scheme are invited to read the terms and conditions first. Donkeys are very sociable creatures who make fantastic companion animals. However, they do require a great deal of time, space, resources, and, of course, attention. Our Guardian donkeys are selected carefully so we can maximize the chances of our donkeys and their foster owners. Guardians have a happy and long-lasting life together. They are always fostered in pairs, given how important it is for them to have a bonded companion. Our Welfare Department commits to a visit once a year to check everything is running smoothly and that all welfare standards are respected.

 

What do you hope people take away from your work?

To better understand and deeply respect this animal, who enormously contributed for centuries to human needs and activities while being so often neglected and mistreated. We want a world where every donkey has a good quality of life, a path that starts with education, knowledge, advocacy, and sensibility. We're trying to achieve it each day, to build awareness, to let people see and experience how wonderful donkeys are in every respect.

 

 

 

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