Children's Festival

A festival built by children for children

In the landscape of summer festivals in Cilento, the Children's Festival in Corleto Monforte holds a special place. The starting idea is both simple and radical: children are not mere spectators of a program prepared by adults; they are the authors. The children of the Corleto Kids group imagine the games, choose them, organize them, and then lead them for their peers, accompanied by educators from the Acarbio association and young volunteers from the Corleto Monforte Rural Lab.

The result is an event that feels more like a big neighborhood gathering than a staged production: marked tracks on the sports field, a football match, a treasure hunt among the park trees, music, and colors. Everything is child-sized because the children themselves decided it.

Where: Corleto Monforte, the village of the Alburni

Corleto Monforte is a municipality in the province of Salerno, in Campania, nestled on a spur on the south-eastern slopes of the Alburni Mountains, at an altitude of about 670 meters. With just over four hundred inhabitants, the town is entirely included in the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park and preserves a forest heritage of thousands of hectares. The village is also known for the Naturalistic Museum of the Alburni and for the Podolico Caciocavallo and Transhumance Festival, the gastronomic event that made its name known beyond provincial borders.

In a context like this, where families are few and distances between towns are significant, a festival dedicated to children takes on a value that goes beyond an afternoon of leisure: it is a way to keep the community alive and give the little ones the concrete feeling that they can influence the life of their own town.

Activities

The program is spread over two afternoons and two different locations in the village, both outdoors:

• Sports Field — bicycle obstacle courses and a football match, for an afternoon dedicated to movement and sports;
• Parco della Rimembranza — treasure hunt among the trees, Just Dance challenges, face painting, and, to close, the Holi Party with colored powders.

The activities are designed for a wide age range, from 3 to 14 years old, with games calibrated so that even the youngest can participate with assistance. The organizers are children of the same age: it is part of the project and shows in the informal and direct style.

Who is behind it

The driving force behind the initiative is Acarbio, an association active for years in the Alburni territory with projects on environmental education, rural heritage enhancement, and active citizenship. Alongside Acarbio, the international volunteers of the Corleto Monforte Rural Lab work hard—a European volunteering project that brings young people aged 18 to 30 to the village every year, engaged in trail maintenance, collecting local memories, and community activities.

The Corleto Kids group was born from this work: a small permanent participation laboratory where the village children meet, discuss, and decide. The Children's Festival is their public showcase, the moment when what they have prepared during the year becomes an event for everyone.

Mandatory registration

Participation requires advance registration, requested by the organizers to activate insurance coverage for the children. The form is distributed in the days prior through the association's channels and the contacts of the coordinators. It is a simple but unavoidable step: without registration, it is not possible to take part in the games.

Why it's worth attending

The Children's Festival has no stages, no guests, and no big numbers. However, it has something rarely found in summer festivals: a direction truly entrusted to those who experience the event. For families in the Alburni area, it is an opportunity for their children to meet peers in a safe, open-air setting; for those visiting inland Cilento during these days, it is an authentic snapshot of a town betting on its children.