Topic:
The Covid-19 pandemic has led global society to grapple with issues relating to health and the health system, but also with old and new social inequalities (Oxfam, 2021) and forms of poverty.
Moreover, the current situation has violently made people aware of how much socio-economic inequalities affect not only health and access to health care, but the general quality of life of the person: for this reason, scientists have started talking about Covid-19 as a syndemic (Horton, 2020), instead of a reductive view as a pandemic.
From the very beginning it was evident that the peculiarity of this pandemic phenomenon, as well as the necessary measures to battle against it, would have had a strong impact on interpersonal and community ties, affecting them and potentially weakening them.
In the Italian context, the city of Brescia and its territory has been one of the area most strongly interested by the first phase of the sanitary emergency, becoming one of the centres most affected by the contagion. Right from the start, the stringent lockdown measures had a considerable economic and social impact (Simeone, Bianchetti and Rozzini, 2021): the Observatory of Poverty and Resources (Caritas-of Brescia) already at the end of May 2020, recorded an average increase of 30% in the number of people who sought support from this local institution of the Catholic Church.
Among these, 40% of these people was made up of individuals who had already been supported in the past, but over time they had managed to get out of a difficult condition. Unfortunately, now they have fallen back into crisis due to the Covid emergency. Alongside, many people found themselves in need for the first time.

Research questions:
- In a constantly changing global and local context marked by emergence, can education promote and support paths of social justice? How?
- On the bases of growing social issues, can inclusive education lead communities to become increasingly responsive to changing needs and promote their educational commitment?
- Which practices in mainstream education can be detected and promoted for a renewed culture of inclusion, social justice and active citizenship?

Objectives:
- Developing new practices in mainstream education to act more efficiently to needs and different forms of poverty, enhancing and promoting the active role of inclusive and intercultural community;
- Identifying innovative proposals and a renewed systemic approach to a view of community welfare, able to propose long lasting solutions to vanquish poverty and social inequalities and, at the same time, support new practices of active citizenship.

Conceptual framework:
In this slump situation, many forms of poverty are emerging (Loperfido and Burgess, 2020): not only economic, but also social and educational (Gordon and Burgess, 2020). Indisputably, people who have most suffered for the consequences of this situation are those who were already in a condition of fragility and vulnerability: elderly people living alone, homeless people, precarious or irregular workers, immigrants.
In a historical background already strongly characterized by the weakening of social relations and sense of belonging, a particularly evident aspect in the urban contexts (Kazepov, 2005), health security measures have further affected community ties. Local communities have been touched in a systemic and multilevel way, but they also could provide responses from below, in front of new collective and individual needs: many expressions of solidarity and mutualism, participation and active citizenship have been implemented by the community to respond to various emerging needs.

The research aims to investigate the new approaches and community responses carried out in a delimited context (Brescia-Northern Italy), to fight against new forms of marginalization and socio-economic poverty which came up in consequence of the health emergency. We focused on some experiences, somehow innovative, of solidarity, but also of networking and empowering relations. A shared experience, to allow to come out the intrinsic potential in each person, conceived not only as beneficiary of aid, but also as a resource for community. From the methodological point of view, the research wants to evidence the innovative elements that characterize the community experiences of solidarity in Brescia. Mainly, we want to highlight how these experiences could catch the requests and voices of minorities and marginalized people, proposing actions at different levels, implemented by different actors: citizens, associations, religious agencies, in collaboration with local welfare entities. We wish to understand how these experiences have stood out for their ability to involve and activate citizens in a perspective of real empowerment and social justice. In other words, what made it possible for people, regardless of economic condition, ability, religious belief, culture and origin, to have been both recipients and actors of solidarity at the same time? Because of the complexity and value of this experience, an inductive and embodied approach will be used. This approach allows us to grasp deeper meanings, but also unexpected interpretative categories, in order to detect new community trajectories. Due to these considerations, the research strategy to which we refer is that of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2002). From this perspective, the research shapes up to be a case study (Stake, 1995), contextualized with respect to the community of Brescia. Specifically, we propose an embedded case study, of a comparative type, aimed to analyse the practices of four representative entities, operating in the local community: a network of citizens' associations; a cultural association; Islamic Cultural Center; a Catholic Institution committed to charity. The comparative approach is aimed at bringing out the specificity of these practices, but also the transversal hermeneutical categories. The theoretical framework to which we refer is ascribable to an ecological and systemic perspective (Bronfenbrenner, 1981). Findings are based on composite qualitative tools: in-depth interviews (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), participant and non-structured interviews, ethnographic tools (Garfinkel, 1967; Bruni and Gobo, 2005), collection of texts and documents concerning the research topic.

The first expected outcome is identifying and widespreading new practices and approaches regarding inclusive social education to aim the different needs of community and the promotion of social justice, under the perspective of collective responsibility and active citizenship. Auspicious would be evaluate the effective involvement of citizenship, in order to reflect with a higher level of awareness on the concept and degree of participation. Another expected outcome is to collect data to reflect about the community, in front of global massive challenges and changes, as a reality capable of constituting a framework based on an agreed set of shared values and practices, but at the same time able to recognize the need for diversity, inclusion and openness to difference as a resource for people, but also for the community itself. A final outcome concerns the possibility of identifying pedagogical guidelines able to promote a new agreement of collaboration between the public administration, the private social agencies and citizenship. The purpose is to spread renewed models of community and proximity welfare, but also a new culture of health, which understands this concept as a common good.

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