Prato Comunità Educante, the great pact for young people wanted by the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation, is consolidated with an increasingly strong network action to promote positive actions that prevent hardship and school dropout. The project, which from this year sees the significant collaboration of Intesa Sanpaolo, in 2023-24 involved over 1500 girls and boys and more than thirty subjects including schools, cultural institutions, public and private bodies. The results were presented by the president of the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation Diana Toccafondi with the intervention of Andrea Forghieri, head of Intesa Sanpaolo for Social Affairs. To illustrate the activities carried out, Simona di Rubba of the Cieli Aperti association and Simone Natali of the Cooperativa Pane& Rose, coordinators of the project, highlighted “the strength of the initiative that comes from continuity, from the work done all together, from the meeting between the different experiences”.
Prato Educating Community has produced an unprecedented collective mobilization, characterized by the synergy between public and private actors in the social sector. “This project, in which the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation believes with conviction, has truly become a profound and shared experience of – Toccafondi highlighted – I thank all those who, with passion, are working online with such significant results to make us proud. I would like us all together to be wonderers, a beautiful term used recently by Alessandro D’Avenia, capable of training our girls and our boys to wonder, because knowledge comes from amazement and not from fear, from love and liberating educational bonds that give confidence, producing courage and curiosity. For this reason the Foundation will continue to be committed to Prato Comunità Educante”. “We have decided to collaborate again with the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation, deeply rooted in the fabric of the community – declared Andrea Forghieri, Intesa Sanpaolo manager for Il Sociale – with a view to co-planning initiatives for young people, to promote training and improve the conditions of access to the world of work”.
The work was done on numerous fronts: from cooperative language learning to the conscious use of social media (with a masterclass to allow teachers to become informed guides of the digital ecosystem): from theater workshops to enhance self-awareness and the aptitude for meeting others to reflect on the values of sport, Olympic and Paralympic disciplines. Activities were carried out to “motivate” study and recover skills by working on individual paths, a series of meetings in schools to learn how to manage “crises as opportunities” and also experiential artistic workshops to learn to share emotions .
