The first of these public events took place in Trapani with the presence of schools, teachers, school managers. The mayor of Trapani also attended, as did staff from the city's social services, and Fr Giovanni D’Andrea, Provincial of the Salesians in Sicily. The meeting was coordinated by the local team and the national project manager, Andrea Sebastiani.
In the project, the involvement of not only children but also adults (teachers and parents) as figures to be qualified and developed in their educational role was important.
“It's not just a matter of providing new or additional knowledge and skills, but of enhancing and rediscovering the skills they already possess,” explains the national manager, Andrea Sebastiani. “In particular, the actions of the project that have this tension are pedagogical counseling aimed at class councils and the training of teachers and parents.”
A second level of the project was working as a network with the various educational agencies in the territory: in fact, participatory courses were developed at each location to draft, seal and soon implement Local Education Contracts (CEL). In this way, the educational challenges and objectives of the various territorial realities and age groups of the minors were identified; in this way it becomes possible to enhance the value and put in a network what the entities already do.
The third level of intervention concerned adolescents directly. "In the operational offices, training courses have been activated in high schools that have, as their aim, to work on self-esteem, motivation and aggregation through sports, creative and artistic and digital activities and support to studying," says Roberto Maurizio, scientific manager of the project.
Dr. Sebastiani concludes: "Education is never a private or self-referential fact, but a matter of community, as well as the fight against educational poverty, which must involve all the actors of the community in order to become an 'educating community'."
