TRENTO, 20 APR – After just over a year of activity, the first 10 Mentors in Italy are at work: they are basically educators, teachers, psychologists and social workers from Milan, Cremona, Naples, Salerno, Ascoli Piceno and Senigallia, who attended a SIR Consortium course and then put the training into practice, involving so far 70 girls and boys with disabilities. It is discussed at the Educa Festival in Rovereto (Trento). The objective is to accompany girls and boys with disabilities who attend the last years of high school to orient themselves in the world of work. The idea was born from “Inclusi. From school to life, round trip”, a three-year project selected by “Con i Bambini”: today in Italy a “bridge” is missing for children with disabilities that connects the world of school with that of work and society in which to live independently; There is also a lack of official data recording this important passage in life, in which most of the reference points change, an even more delicate and complex passage for those with a disability. Among the mentors is Federica Lauritti – educator of the Meraki social cooperative in Cremona – who talks about her concrete experience, after having followed the training, in accompanying two 16-year-old twin sisters with disabilities in choosing their future: “The two girls attend the fourth year of high school at a professional institute. The work I plan to do with them is very long, which is why I began the process of accompanying them to their future long before the end of school. In parallel with their school attendance, the project Mentor offers them socializing activities: the carpentry workshop or the photography workshop, a trip to the market or the theatre. We therefore work on choice, on acquiring autonomy in moving around the city, on time and money management empowerment, but we are starting to see the first positive signs: ‘Inclusi’ has generated a change in their lives and that of their family, the Mentor in fact works closely with fragile boys and girls, but it is the entire family unit”. (HANDLE).
