The school-work alternation projects carried out at Kala Onlus and Il Giardino di Madre Teresa aim at allowing students to acquire specific and general skills through activities for children that will also be useful in their futures, taking into account the relationship between any activity and its context, in our case rich in humanity but often contradictory. Today, in fact, it seems more essential than ever to open up to people from different cultures with an emphatic capacity and with a mind free of any form of separation.
The “Active Citizenship” Project
The “Active Citizenship” project aims to provide students with tools to be used in the work life and volunteering, to help them learn, use and develop their own skills, through inclusion in various contexts in which the Association operates, such as:
– Having the opportunity to live an experience identical to that of many work environments;
– Acquiring teamwork and organizational skills within a working group, favoring teamwork between members and the managers of Kala Onlus;
– Experiencing the work, communication and human relations that are created between employees and managers of the environment in which Kala Onlus carries out its activity;
– Acquiring managerial, communicative and emphatic skills specific to the work environment and volunteering;
– Developing your creativity;
– Becoming aware of the importance of one’s own work responsibilities within a group, respecting roles, maintaining the right level of concentration and adding one’s own peculiarities to the team.
The total number of hours proposed within the “Active Citizenship” project is 90 hours to be developed over the three-year period. The 5 possible activities to participate in are:
1. “Incarta la solidarietà” (Wrap the Solidarity)
2. “Film maker per un giorno” (Film maker for a day)
3. “Settimana della solidarietà” (Week of Solidarity)
4. “Attività con i bambini” (Activities with Children
5. “Altre attività” (Other Activities)
and are intended to be modular. It is also possible for schools to choose only some of the activities to complete the alternating hours of some classes or students who have already carried out other activities at other facilities.
Last year, around 200 volunteers from 8 schools in Palermo took part:
1. Liceo Classico Umberto Primo
2. Liceo Benedetto Croce
3. Istituto Magistrale Camillo Finocchiaro Aprile
4. I.I.S. Damiani Almeyda – Francesco Crispi
5. Don Bosco Ranchibile
6. Liceo Scientifico “Albert Einstein”
7. Istituto Gonzaga
8. Liceo Classico Internazionale Statale Giovanni Meli
With the first 4 schools, school-work agreements were signed. The students of the next 4 schools participated in the project to obtain educational credits through extra-curricular voluntary activities.