Narrating Needs, Embodying Rights: Situated Learning and Community Agency against Cultural Desertification in Southern Salento

Current macroeconomic dynamics and extractive digital neocolonialism risk reducing citizens to passive users, exacerbating educational poverty and cultural desertification in the inner and marginal areas of Southern Salento. This paper proposes the Ecosystem of Territorial Cohesion (ETC) as an epistemological and operational framework for activating community agency through situated and embodied learning. Adopting a qualitative research-intervention design informed by Participatory Action Research, Community-Based Participatory Research, Action Community Learning and Needs Mapping, the study examines three intervention pillars: ZooAntroPedagogy with Narrative Medicine and simulation; inclusive sport and nature-based education; participatory access to Research Infrastructures. Findings show that embodied biofeedback, narrative micro-circles, outdoor experiential learning and authentic scientific inquiry support emotional regulation, communication, peer inclusion, resilience, critical thinking and cognitive sovereignty among vulnerable minors. The contribution argues that narrating needs is not a mere diagnostic practice but a performative and civic act through which vulnerability can be repositioned as an embodied right. Education thus becomes community regeneration, transforming marginal territories into laboratories of democratic participation and educational citizenship.