Danilo Dolci

Who was Danilo Dolci?

Danilo Dolci was an educator, poet, sociologist, anthropologist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He went on a hunger strike to protest the death of a child and invented the “reverse strike” – so called because participants worked for free to carry out public utility projects – and was imprisoned in Ucciardone prison for defending the rights of the poor. He received the Lenin Peace Prize in Russia and was defamed by the Church in Sicily. He founded the Centre for Full Employment and the School of Mirto. Though internationally renowned, he was often ignored in Italy.

Born in Sesana (now Slovenia) in 1924, he spent his childhood in northern Italy. Shortly before graduating in architecture, he abandoned his studies to dedicate himself to the most vulnerable:
“You cannot be happy if another human being is suffering.”
As an architect, he couldn’t help those who had no home. The question that guided him throughout his life was:
How can power be restored to each individual?

After a brief period in the Nomadelfia community (Grosseto, Tuscany), he moved to Trappeto, a small Sicilian fishing village where he lived until his death on December 30, 1997. He had previously spent a month there in 1940–41, following his father, a railway worker. In Trappeto, he chose to live in poverty among the poor, sharing in their hardship in order to understand their conditions from within. There, he began writing one of the most profound chapters of Southern Italy’s social rebirth.

In that small village of farmers and fishermen, he began his work on popular self-analysis: asking questions from a place of genuine ignorance, seeking to understand the people’s most urgent needs in order to imagine a better future together.

At the bedside of a child who had died of hunger, Dolci began his first hunger strike. Too many children were dying—or at risk of dying—from hunger and poor hygiene; too many parents, jobless, were forced to steal to feed their children and were labeled criminals.
“Here, we must act fast and well, because people are dying.”
Italian society needed to understand what life was really like in that part of Sicily.

By asking people directly how their lives could be changed, Dolci revived the Socratic tradition of maieutics: a method based on questions that help new ideas to emerge. One of the first collective needs expressed was for water – democratic water. Through dialogue and awareness-raising, water became a tool for economic, social, and cultural transformation.

Other actions followed: the reverse strike; a mass hunger strike by a thousand people on the beach, against illegal fishing; the creation of a free radio station; and bold denunciations of the mafia. Then came the educational experiment of the School of Mirto, where, nestled between mountains and sea, maieutics became a pedagogical method to help each individual grow through dialogue and mutual exchange. Here, everyone could dream of who they might become, and imagine new possible futures.

The maieutic method became the key to empowering anyone, anywhere, to recognize and activate their own power.

The “Borgo di Dio” (God’s Hamlet) – the name of that Sicilian hamlet – was one of the most important places where Dolci’s maieutic approach gave rise to concrete actions for the regeneration of the territory. It was here that Danilo laid the foundation of his life, building the home where he lived until his final days, welcoming friends from all over the world.

Also built there was a space originally called the Centre for Full Employment Initiatives, now known as the Centre for Creative Development – a place for libraries, a circular meeting table built on purpose, an auditorium, and guest housing, where reflections turned into organic planning. Funded in part by the Lenin Peace Prize and designed with architects like Bruno Zevi, the centre hosted key meetings on city-territory planning, organized nonviolent resistance actions and marches after the Belice Valley earthquake, and became the birthplace of the Mirto educational project.

There, locals gathered alongside world-renowned scholars to co-design change.

Today, the Borgo lives again thanks to the commitment and determination of one of Dolci’s daughters, Daniela Dolci, who has restored these spaces to be shared by all those who wish to carry on his legacy.

Who was Danilo Dolci?
A man who, throughout his life, turned dreams into concrete plans.