Two initiatives, common goals and mantras. ‘Insieme Creiamo il Futuro’ (together we create the future) and ‘#ORIENTAlife’ come from the South of Italy, particularly Calabria and Campania, two Regions that – in general – share common issues (when talking about Youth) with the rest of Southern Europe.
Thanks to their efforts to enhance the school as a protagonist and active interface between young people, the world of work and the professions, involving students on the one hand and a multiplicity of actors present in the area on the other, the two projects are here presented as best practices with qualities capable of being considered as replicable in other territories.
Particularly, the strength of ‘Insieme Creiamo il Futuro’ (together we create the future) has been to create a concrete connection between the the roles and skills of significant players in the Ministry of Labour and the world of school, including trainings’ and work’ needs of outgoing students, therefore responding effectively and promptly to the needs of the labor market to integrate active policies, training policies and labor demand by placing them at the service of the social and employment growth of a territory.
The network has been constituted by involving a so-called ‘Centro per l’impiego’ (which is, in Italy, an Employment Center of the public administration, with regional competence, responsible for implementing public policies on employment and providing services in favor of the local labor market), ‘5 Scuole’, Confindustria (the main representative organisation of Italian manufacturing and service companies), the Order of Labor Consultants and the Chamber of Commerce together with the support ANPAL Servizi S.p.A. (National Agency for Active Labor Policies), the main public company which, in Italy, operates in the field of active employment policies.
This agency is at the heart as well of the second initiative here presented, ‘#ORIENTAlife’, born following the signing of an Agreement in November 2021, between the Campania Region, the Regional School Office and, as said, ANPAL Servizi S.p.A. to promote and support guidance courses in educational institutions and in the system of higher technical institutes, particularly implementing activities in schools to strengthen guidance actions, with the aim of enabling students to acquire those guidance skills useful to support them in decisions regarding their educational and professional future. At the same time, the initiative helped to implement a strategy able to involve all the main actors of the Ministry of Labor to respond profitably to the challenge of employability and the transition to work.
Particularly, ‘#ORIENTAlife’ arises from the awareness of the importance of guidance as a strategic factor to reduce early school leaving and ensure the educational success of male and female students. Education in choice, self-knowledge and one’s vocations are fundamental conditions for guaranteeing the best opportunities for cultural, economic and social growth for the new generations, promoting inclusive development. The aim is to support secondary schools in creating a “lifelong orientation” path aimed at facilitating students’ self-knowledge, the educational context and the development of the skills necessary to develop a life plan. An orientation seen at 360 degrees as orientation to life, as a process capable of contributing to the growth of the personality and to the definition of a life project that is consistent with one’s attitudes and expectations. All of this, from the point of view of #ORIENTAlife, cannot be achieved except through a teaching that can be qualified as a guideline.
The aim of the project, in addition to that of strengthening the guidance skills of the students, is to increasingly consolidate the collaboration between the network of public bodies involved in the guidance processes and the system of companies interested, obviously, in a dialogue increasingly close with schools and training institutions in general.
Orientation has been fundamental as well for the activities implemented under ‘Insieme Creiamo il Futuro’, whose purpose was to create an aid in terms of services, in particular those of guidance, provided to young people and students in transition through taking charge, qualitative-quantitative profiling, specialist guidance, up to accompaniment at work. Services capable of guaranteeing high standards of proximity, also facilitating the process of matching supply and demand by companies. All by also facilitating the collection of professional and training needs of companies, enhancing the role and support of stakeholders also through the construction and implementation of a dynamic mapping of the professional needs of companies and the skills required, also to identify innovative skills, and in line with the characteristics and evolutionary prospects of the territorial demand in connection with the needs of the companies, with respect to the professional profiles and skills required, contributing to the process of updating and introducing new professional profiles in the regional repertoire.
Thus, the professional needs of companies were connected with the potential skills of outgoing students, also in relation to the possibility of aligning skills with on-the-job training realignment courses, aiming to reduce the skills gap that hinders the transition from school to training, to work, up to the company.
Among job days for schools, transition guidance workshops, profiling activities, mapping of outgoing profiles and collection of professional and/or training needs, ‘Insieme Creiamo il Futuro’ got those results:
- 52 companies applying to the Employment Center for 119 professional needs
- 18 applications were considered consistent with the mapped profiles
- 127 student candidates for 190 selection interviews
- 136 selection interviews
- 94 students showed interaction skills during the interviews
- 49 students were deemed eligible
- 22 were selected to be sent to work.
On the other hand, ‘#ORIENTAlife’ took place in about 400 secondary schools of I and II level in the Campania region, through almost 400 labs, and around 1,500 teachers and over 5,500 students were involved.
Those numbers represent the excellent result of teamworks, with Anpal Servizi engaged as leading actor in contacting schools, scheduling meetings, providing workshops, and following the entire process up to the conclusion of the activities. The strength of these two initiatives, finally, was the involvement of all the main actors of the labor market to respond profitably to the challenge of employability and the transition to work, implementing system actions to strengthen the public-private cooperation of the actors and the labor supply chains, education and training and the social sector. The main goal at the heart, alongside the specificities of each project, was to strengthen the orientation skills and guidance of (for) students, to increasingly consolidate the collaboration between the network of public bodies involved in the orientation processes and the system of companies interested, obviously, in an increasingly close dialogue with schools and training institutions in general.
With the support of Michele Raccuglia and Luigi Falco, Anpal Servizi
