Every Sunday night, as travellers hurry through Rome’s Termini Station, a different crowd gathers by the station’s Metro entrance. Volunteers set up tables, steam rises from pots of pasta and soup, and a makeshift bar offers coffee, tea, and juice. For almost five years, volunteer-led initiative MamaTermini has turned this space into a weekly meeting point for Rome’s homeless, migrants, and volunteers – filling not only stomachs but the gaps left by public institutions.
MamaTermini began in response to what its founders saw as the public administration’s inaction on homelessness at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Founded by Italian journalist Francesco Conte and Egyptian journalist Moati, the initiative started as a small group of reporters interested in migration and social issues who began cooking meals at home and distributing them to people living on the streets.
The initiative brings together volunteers to support the city’s most vulnerable. “One day you might be filling plates with pasta, another day you might be giving out snacks or something for breakfast,” says Alessandra Bacelli, a journalist who also volunteers. When she first started, she was “surprised to see that many of the people who come aren’t actually homeless. Very often, they’re elderly people who clearly struggle financially.”
Many beneficiaries are migrants, including Ahmed El-Masri, 24, who moved from Egypt to Palermo, Sicily, when he was just 13 to complete middle school. After graduating, Ahmed explains that he has been constantly searching for stable work, taking him from Milan to Marche. After being posted in Rome, he discovered MamaTermini by chance when he noticed people handing out meals near the station. He takes what he needs, “fruit, bread, juice”, and socialises with peers and volunteers. For Ahmed, the organisation offers not just food but momentary relief and a support network to help navigate the unforgiving realities of life in Rome while he pursues a cooking course in hopes of a better future.
Ahmed’s experience reflects a broader reality across Italy, where migrants and low-income residents often depend on volunteer initiatives like MamaTermini to fill the gaps left by public institutions. “What strikes me most,” Francesco says, “and what I’ve been documenting over the years, is this growing division between public and private space.” An instrumental factor has been the privatisation of Termini Station to a large multinational company, marking a shift in who is responsible for homelessness. Since the takeover, Francesco notes several examples of “hostile architecture” – measures that prevent people from sleeping near the station and force them out of the area.
This is compounded by the state’s shifting approach to homelessness, with the line redrawn between private and public space depending on the administration in power. “There is no intention whatsoever on the part of the public administration to solve the problem of homelessness,” Francesco says bluntly. “All issues related to homelessness are left to the Catholic Church to deal with.” At the same time, there has been a wave of online videos focusing on what people call degrado – a term meaning “urban decay,” referring to homelessness and visible social hardship. The approach to degrado is largely about keeping homeless people away from sight rather than addressing the problem itself.
This Sunday marked the week of Francesco’s birthday, celebrated with a chorus of wishes and a candlelit cake. The cake shared among everyone underlined MamaTermini’s belief in keeping its dinners as open as possible – a public space where both the poor and the rich can meet. “That’s the spirit that shaped our Sunday dinners,” Francesco says, as the last candles flicker out – a steady light of solidarity in a city where many slip through the safety net.
Dylan Browne-Wilkinson
