Almost 60 young offenders placed on vocational and sports integration programmes. This is the outcome of the first nine months of the Play for the Future project set up by Fondazione Milan and Fondazione CDP.
The presentation of the results, which took place in Naples, was attended by the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, the Councillor for Youth Policies in Naples, Chiara Marciani, the Head of the Department for Juvenile and Community Justice, Antonio Sangermano, a delegation from AC Milan composed of the club’s Honorary Vice President, Franco Baresi, and the General Secretary of the Fondazione Milan, Rocco Giorgianni, in addition to Leonilde Vitolo, Secretary of the Fondazione CDP’s Board of Directors.
Of the 57 participants involved — who were all male and 70% of whom were underage — only 8.3% played a sport and just 5.6% had had some form of work experience prior to the programme.
Since the start of the project, there has also been a general improvement in the young people’s psychological health, with greater willingness to engage in dialogue, increased self-esteem and confidence in themselves and those working with them, and growth of their social and inter-personal skills. They also developed greater reliability and an ability to reflect on their limitations and the reasons that led to them offending.
These play a fundamental role in achieving one of the project’s main goals: reducing the risk of them reoffending.
The event was held during the week when World Children’s Day, established by the United Nations and held on 20 November each year to commemorate children’s and adolescents’ rights, was celebrated. This year, the theme was “For every child, every right”, drawing attention to the need to protect children’s rights, including the right to a more liveable and peaceful planet, where they have equal opportunities for accessing education.
Since its inception, Fondazione CDP has pursued the goal of promoting social inclusion, with a particular focus on young people and adolescents, both with its own projects and through partnerships with leading third-sector bodies.
Its activities include launching a call for proposals in May 2023 entitled “A Scuola per il Futuro”, which makes more than €1.6 million available to support new or ongoing initiatives with the potential to combat young people leaving school early. In October, four winning projects were announced, which will involve students, teachers and families from nine Italian regions.
In addition, to help reduce youth unemployment in Italy and increase young people’s digital skills, a partnership was established with Generation Italy, McKinsey & Company’s non-profit foundation, for the “Accademia dei Mestieri digitali” project. In its first year, the initiative led to around 90% of the young people involved securing employment in companies at the end of the digital training programme. The collaboration will continue for the 2023-24 year.
Again with the goal of training younger generations, Fondazione CDP, alongside the “Con i Bambini” social enterprise, has launched the “Strumenti per crescere” call for proposals, which seeks to promote the development of basic skills in STEAM disciplines and is aimed at students in the south of Italy. The €3 million competition closed in February 2023 with seven projects selected.
(*Data compiled by the Social Impact Assessment analysis conducted on the project and carried out in collaboration with the ISNET Association)