Domenico Lucano – Italian Mayor

As the mayor of Riace a small village in southern Italy, Domenico Lucano gained a ton of international attention when he used an innovative approach to deal with the refugee crisis. For many decades emigration had taken the life from the village of just 2,000 people on the Calabrian coast. However, when many Kurdish refugees arrived on a boat back in 1998, Lucano saw a great opportunity.

Back then Lucano was just a schoolteacher, who was able to give the refugees shelter in some abandoned apartment buildings and provide them with job training. Eighteen years later, Lucano is the mayor of Riace and is hailed for saving the town and rejuvenating the economy. Now the village has migrants from over 20 different nations and has been able to host over 6,000 asylum seekers over the years.

Even though Lucano’s pro-refugee stance has put him at odds with the state and even the mafia, his model is still working and being adopted all over Europe as the refugee crisis peaks. In 2016, Lucano was named as one of the 50 most influential people in the world according to Fortune magazine’s annual survey.

The masculine name Domenico is the Italian version of Dominic, which is taken from the late Latin name Dominicus that means “of the Lord”. The name was often given to children that were born on Sunday. There are many notable people with the name, from the Renaissance painter Domenico Veneziano who lived in Florence to Domenico di Bartolo the Italian painter.