The partnership with ActionAid forms part of the concerted effort to bounce back from the health emergency and seeks to increase the civic engagement of youths, and the entire educational community, through the development and strengthening of cognitive, relational and social skills with the aim of pursuing the goals of Fondazione CDP in the Instruction Sector and in particular in the fight against educational poverty and school drop-out.
Context and Partnership The percentage of children and adolescents living in poverty following the health emergency has trebled and is now over 12%. This exponential growth in the economic fragility of households is also one of the biggest contributing factors to the increase in educational poverty and school drop-out.
In 2020 the percentage of children dropping out of school before completing their secondary school education or professional training was 16.3% in southern Italy, 11.5% in central Italy and 11.0% in the North. There is a marked imbalance between the regions: Sicily, Campania, Calabria and Puglia register the biggest drop-out rates (19.4%, 17.3%, 16.6% and 15.6% respectively).
Fondazione CDP and ActionAid believe that schools, in an open dialogue with families and the local community, have a key role to play in the education and promotion of a form of active citizenship that respects gender differences and takes responsibility for the future. For this reason they have developed an action plan to facilitate and promote dialogue between schools, social services and the non-profit sector with the aim of meeting the needs of the most vulnerable children and preparing them for the challenges of the present and the future.
The project
The project forms part of the recovery from the health emergency in the wider sense and aims to encourage the direct involvement of children, teachers and parents as drivers of change, raising awareness of the values of active citizenship in order to contribute to the development of a new more informed, responsible and cohesive society.
It also involves courses focused on child guidance and motivation, the prevention of gender violence, class management training and support for parents and educational responsibility.
Around 9,000 youngsters of between 11 and 19 will be reached both in-person and online, in addition to 520 teachers and educators and 300 parents and tutors in the cities of Rome, Syracuse, Reggio Calabria, Naples, Bari and Palermo.
In fact, in these areas the school drop-out rate is alarming and well above the national average of 14% (over 20% in Syracuse, Reggio Calabria, Naples and Palermo), as are the poverty figures (41% in Tor Bella Monaca in Rome; in Reggio Calabria over 30,000 families are below the poverty threshold; in Naples 9.7% of families face situations of economic hardship).
The project aims to maximise its impact by expanding the pool of beneficiaries through different tools already used by ActionAid, including Radio Kivuli - the internet radio station of the ActionAid community of activists and the portal Agente0011 where the serious game “InclusiCity” was launched. This latter edutainment tool will see the children play the role of the mayor of a hypothetical city with the goal of maintaining a balance between economic sustainability, the wellbeing of the general public and social and environmental respect in order to make the city more inclusive.
The project also involves a partnership with Fondazione Milan. An event day will be held in the cities of Syracuse, Reggio Calabria and Rome during which coaches and educators from the Fondazione will organise educational and sporting activities involving students and teachers. Competition, trust, respect and collaboration will be the core values of these days which will use sport as an additional educational tool and means of promoting the potential of the children.
Finally, there will be a programme of skills-based volunteering projects in which collaborators of the CDP group will take part in tutoring, guidance and workshop activities for students of the project on a wide range of issues, such as sustainability, innovation and digital technology.