Growing up above a volcano

'Any noise, at any hour, takes us back there: morning, evening, night. Even showers are quick, because there is always the feeling you need to be ready to get out,' Anna De Matteis told FairPlanet. De Matteis teaches technology at the Marconi-Diano school in Pozzuoli, about 400 metres from the Solfatara, one of the Campi Flegrei volcano's craters. In a classroom in the same town, students sit one at a time under two professional lights, facing photographer Chiara Goia's lens.

Some laugh, others stiffen as, one by one, they sit for their portrait. It is one of the first moments of Voci dal Vulcano (Voices from the Volcano), a two-year educational project involving about 70 twelve-year-olds in two Pozzuoli schools, including De Matteis's. Each child will be photographed again at the end of the project, so that the two portraits, side by side, can show how they have changed, and how their relationship with the volcanic land they live on has changed with them. In between come workshops, interviews, explorations of the area and encounters with science.

A caldera people call home

Campi Flegrei lacks the silhouette of a postcard volcano. It is a vast caldera more than 10 kilometres across, partly submerged in the Gulf of Pozzuoli and largely covered by neighbourhoods, roads and schools. Around half a million people live in the red zone, the area at highest risk.

Local life follows the rhythm of bradyseism: the ground slowly rises and sinks because of processes deep underground. Since 2005, Pozzuoli has been rising again, bringing swarms of earthquakes. Two magnitude 4.6 tremors struck in 2025, and a magnitude 4.4 quake closed local schools in May 2026. Then, on 31 July 2026, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake hit the area, the strongest in 40 years, just weeks before the school year began.

Growing up between tremors

Her students get frightened, De Matteis said, but they are used to it. 'Ask them whether they would like to leave Pozzuoli and they all say no. They are deeply attached to their families, their spaces, the colours of this place.' During evacuations, older students often reassure the teachers. Students whose homes were damaged commute from distant towns to be in class by 7:45. De Matteis, who moved here as an adult, feels differently: 'I would leave. My husband and my children were born here, and for them it would be unthinkable. For me, this situation causes a great deal of anxiety.'

A few kilometres away, the second school, Pergolesi 2, stands in Monterusciello, a neighbourhood built in the 1980s for residents evacuated from the historic centre during an earlier crisis. 'They were prefabricated buildings meant to be temporary, and they became permanent homes. Many have no balconies, only windows,' said Concetta Paparo, a teacher and the project's coordinator there. Tremors are weaker here, but almost every student has relatives in central Pozzuoli who have been evacuated repeatedly. When it comes to students' attention and learning, Paparo said, families' social and economic hardship weighs more than the volcano.

The missing conversation

Research on eco-anxiety shows how heavily environmental uncertainty weighs on the young. A 2021 study in The Lancet Planetary Health, surveying 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 in 10 countries, found that 59 per cent were very or extremely worried about the climate crisis, and that many felt unheard by the adults making decisions.

Bradyseism is geological and unrelated to climate. Yet young people in Campi Flegrei share much with those in the research: a threat that cannot be removed, contradictory information, adults managing the emergency on their behalf. 'We have always limited ourselves to practical guidance: evacuation drills, the Civil Protection website, what to do and who to call,' Paparo said. 'The emotional side stays in the background, because there is never time and we lack the right tools. On these issues, it is better not to improvise.'

The approach tested in Pozzuoli could also apply where uncertainty stems from the climate crisis: in areas exposed to floods, drought or wildfires, young people equally need to be heard before being given instructions.

Starting from their questions

Voci dal Vulcano was created to fill that gap. Funded by the National Geographic Society's Meridian Grant Program and promoted by the non-profit SeedScience, it is led by geophysicist and teacher Giulia Barfucci, working with photographer and National Geographic Explorer Chiara Goia and Michele Raggio, co-founder of SeedScience. Two volcanologists work alongside them, as does psychologist Simona Iachetta, a specialist in solution-focused brief therapy. Four second-year middle-school classes, with students aged 12 to 13, take part.

The first day began with a crossword and a few questions: what a National Geographic Explorer does, how much they trust science, which people and sources they rely on. Students then anonymously wrote down their doubts and fears about the volcano, which now shape the sessions with researchers. Later in the programme, they will interview their families about past crises, and those accounts will feed further discussions with scientists and creative work.

The programme has already changed in its first few weeks. One student asked the two volcanologists, a man and a woman, why they had chosen their profession. He said he had made up his mind at 12, when a volcanologist visited his class. His colleague remembered a school trip to the Solfatara: the smell of sulphur bothered everyone except her. 'That struck them most. Since then, their sessions always begin with their own stories,' Goia said. 'The programme has to fit each class: four classes, four different worlds.' The second year will be designed with the teachers, based on how the first goes.

In front of the lens

The first portrait has a purpose: 'The individual portrait is the first way to make them feel they matter, that they are the project's protagonists and not simply its subjects,' Goia said. At that age, two years transform a person: one boy photographed at a pilot workshop in February, she recalled, was almost unrecognisable months later.

Goia is also producing a photo reportage on Campi Flegrei and hopes some students will guide her to places they know. Her photos and the students' work will form a public exhibition.

A model to replicate

In the first year, each class will complete 33 hours of activities, 12 of them led independently by science, Italian, art and technology teachers. Around 20 teachers will be trained, and the methods will become an educational toolkit for other communities exposed to natural hazards.

The hardest part, De Matteis said, concerns the adults: involving the whole class council – all the teachers of a class – and organising the independent work. Paparo described an uneven response, with some colleagues enthusiastic and others only willing to give up lesson hours. For De Matteis, who retires next year, the project is also a fitting conclusion. 'It brings together emotion and knowledge. At the pilot workshop, I discovered sides of my students I had never known.'

Paparo hopes students will learn to check news before believing it, and to recognise those who monitor the volcano daily. 'Knowing exactly what is happening, perhaps better than their parents or siblings, can help them reassure those around them.' In two years, they will sit under the same lights once more. By then, the ground beneath Pozzuoli will have moved again.