The GĒR Project

Those who choose to stay at Ostello del Sorbo do not simply receive a warm welcome: they offer one too. The hostel’s activities – from room management and food service to maintaining the green spaces and assisting guests – are carried out by autistic young people and young people with other psychosocial disabilities. Every stay thus becomes a reciprocal gesture: guests are welcomed by people who are themselves following a path towards inclusion.

GĒR: a symbol of inclusion

In the tradition of ancient Jewish culture, the Gēr is the stranger who is welcomed and included in the community: not an outsider merely to be tolerated, but a person to be fully embraced and made part of the social fabric of the community that receives them. This is where the project takes its name. The word Gēr brings together two people who meet and recognise one another at the Sorbo. On one side is the traveller who, while walking the Via Francigena, arrives in an unfamiliar community and finds hospitality there. On the other is a person who, because of psychosocial vulnerabilities, experiences marginalisation and – through the Gēr Project – finds a pathway into employment and a recognised place in society. They represent two expressions of the same sense of displacement and the same possibility of inclusion: welcoming one means including the other

Work that restores dignity

For the young people involved, the hostel is not a sheltered place separated from the world, but a real workplace where they interact every day with guests from across Italy and other countries. At the Sorbo, they can develop practical and interpersonal skills under the guidance of qualified tutors, gain full recognition and dignity as workers, and become an integral, essential and valued part of the community that welcomes them – just as, centuries ago, the community welcomed the Gēr.