Together with women, children were the ones who suffered the heaviest consequences after the escape from Friuli and from eastern Veneto. It is estimated that 30% of refugees was made up of children less than 15 years of age who, in many cases, had lost contact with the members of their original household. For instance, hundreds of children who swarmed the streets of Milan were gradually given shelter inside orphanages and religious institutions. Many of them had actually remained without any parents because of the war but there were also cases where groups of children were lost during their journey because they took a different train from that taken by their parents.
As a result children found themselves without anyone to turn to. Many districts had to organize nursery schools, school courses, recreational centres and training institutions that held for them prospects for the future. In the cities initiatives of this type were easier thanks to the presence of structures that were already in existence whereas in the countryside these initiatives were much more difficult. In some zones in the central regions in Italy settlements were set up that alternated study periods with work in the fields and in this way tried to include youths within a new reality. One of the main problems during this period in fact was that of exclusion.
In the same way as adults, even child refugees were considered as strangers: "i ragazzi siciliani ci menavano, pensavano che noi fossimo la causa dei loro guai. Ci chiamavano rossi del nord. Non avevano mai visto la neve e quell'inverno, dopo il nostro arrivo, era nevicato più volte. […] I ragazzini del posto ci canzonavano: sti profughi ci anno portato 'a neve." (the children from Sicily used to hit us and thought that we were the ones who had caused their problems. They used to call us the red people from the north. They had never seen snow in their lifetime and during the winter after we arrived, it snowed several times. […] The young children of the village would tease us: these refugees have brought snow with them." Testimony of Giovanni Pianaro in Daniele Ceschin, La condizione delle donne profughe e dei bambini dopo Caporetto in DEP - Deportate, esuli, profughe, Rivista Telematica di studi sulla memoria femminile, no. 1, 2004, page 41).
In the following months the luckiest ones succeeded in rejoining their parents or their relatives. In these cases children could count on the affection of their family but the problems remained the same: poverty was always rampant and many of them, instead of going to the schools of the locality, used to be kept at home to carry out the household chores (especially if their mother had to work in the absence of their father). As a result, the two communities - the local community and refugees - always remained divided.
