Passo dopo Passo… Insieme fights school drop-out among pre-teens in Italy
Support and a different approach to schooling helps children to continue their education
Current Project
Today, when it comes to coping with their studies, children need to find useful and effective strategies that go beyond conventional models, which can sometimes be difficult to apply. This may be one of the reasons for the increasingly widespread early school drop-out that is now a national emergency in many countries, including Italy. A phenomenon that reveals on the one hand a chronic and structural problem within the school system, and on the other shows the inadequacy of the responses offered so far.
The association Passo dopo Passo – Insieme proposes an intervention model based on “the promotion of education aimed at school wellbeing”, which is able to recognize both potential and hidden weaknesses in children, defusing, in a timely manner, those elements that could evolve critically.
The “Meglio dopo Insieme” (“Better Together Afterwards”) program is an after-school project designed for pre-teens (11-14 years old). Its goal is to boost the educational and school success of 130 secondary school pupils in the areas of Milán Rogoredo and Sesto San Giovanni (Milan) through study support itineraries that increase levels of motivation, awareness, study skills and strategies, promoting youth volunteering and the involvement of educational figures.
The project works with the children, challenging certain cultural paradigms with which the young people approach their studies, including the idea that doing badly at school is an unalterable “lifestyle” and that it is not always true that “homework comes before pleasure”, but actually “homework can also be pleasure”. The association wants to encourage the positive dimension of learning and the school experience by enabling pupils to gain a new perspective of themselves and school through successful results.
To achieve this, they work in three main areas:
Action 1: study support work groups, independent study evenings and a listening desk for young people with a psychologist.
Action 2: promotion of volunteering.
Action 3: interviews with all the stakeholders involved: parents, teachers, school principals.
“Meglio dopo Insieme” is a “space for normality”, an important place for the educational empowerment of young people and their access to opportunities, where they can socialize with their peer group, experience positive relationships with adults and be guided, encouraged and supported to cope with difficulties at school.
The project does not attempt to solve the financial, family or psychological problems of the beneficiaries. Instead, the aim is to ensure that these problems have as little impact as possible on the school experience, so that it is safeguarded and uncontaminated.