Riace is a small village in Italy, which is very pretty but also quite poor. Riace once had a population of 3, 000, but in the 1990s, many people left the village to find work in other places. The only school closed. There were no restaurants and very few shops. Many houses were empty. Riace was becoming an empty town. But these days it's a different story, because of one man whose dreams have turned Riace into a village with a future.
One day in 1998, Domenico Lucano, a teacher from Riace, was driving near the sea when he saw a large group of people on the beach. They were refugees(难民). Lucano had an idea of how to help these people and how they, in turn, might possibly help him save his village. He decided to welcome them into the village and to give them food and living places in return for work.
It was the beginning of a plan. Lucano created an organization called City of the Future. The idea was simple: The village began to welcome refugees from Somalia, Iraq and other places. Lucano used buildings which had been empty for years to house the new arrivals(到达者), and he created workshops for them to work in.
Riace is now home to about three hundred refugees, who live happily alongside the locals. Most of the women make handicrafts to sell in local shops, while the men repair empty houses to rent(出租) to tourists. And because there are more children, the school is open again. Lucano, who became mayor of Riace in 2004, has managed to create jobs and to stop the villagers moving away, while at the same time helping some of the poorest people in the world.
