The Discovering Talents Fair ended the third edition of Meet no Neet, the programme promoted by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale in collaboration with Microsoft to provide young men and women with the key skills necessary to access the labour market. Today in Peschiera Borromeo, at the headquarters of Microsoft Italy, high school students met with companies and youth incubators to present their social inclusion and innovation projects.
They had five minutes to convince the audience to invest in their entrepreneurial idea. The five winning teams of the third edition of Meet No Neet will also receive an award in cash to develop their project. The initiative is promoted by Fondazione Mondo Digitale in collaboration with Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft YouthSpark Programme, which involved over 30 schools throughout Italy.
During the school year, students developed a social innovation and inclusion project, after identifying an issue affecting their community. They worked together to propose a solution together with other local actors. These young men and women are learning to design their own future and unlike the 84.3% of unemployed peers (Eurostat data), they will not have to turn to parents and friends.
From the Mercy Jubilee App for Pilgrims in Rome to search engines for waste disposal via QR codes or web applications for immigrant reception and inclusion, there were ten finalist projects and five were selected for the elevator pitch:
- FRUIT-TI AMO del LS Cavalleri - Parabiago (Milan)
- I’M GREAT del LS Giovanni Gandini - Lodi
- MY ARTIST dell’IIS M.Pagano - Campobasso
- SMART BUONARROTI del LS Buonarroti - Pisa
- WALK IN ROME dell’IIS Via Copernico - Pomezia (Rome)
Today, in Peschiera Borromeo, at the headquarters of Microsoft Italy, high school students presented their social inclusion and innovation projects to potential investors via an elevator pitch. The audience included enterprises, incubators and trade associations that evaluated the most interesting projects. Thanks to the advice and observations of the experts, the students will be able to improve their entrepreneurial ideas and start a crowdfunding campaign on the Phyrtual.org platform. The five finalists also received a €400 cash award to develop their projects.
The proclamation of the winner, live on Twitter: “I'm Great” wins the Discovering Talents Fair!
#MeetnoNeet ecco il progetto vincitore della Discovering Talents Fair! https://t.co/K5Nb4DM4mj
— Fond. Mondo Digitale (@fmdigitale) 2 marzo 2016
This initiative also inaugurates the STEM Month that the Ministry of Education, University and Research has dedicated to women and scientific disciplines (STEM stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) to overcome the gender divide in the field of ICT.
The Fondazione Mondo Digitale and Microsoft accepted the invitation of the Ministry of Education, University and Research with success stories of female leadership: Paola Cavallero, Marketing & Operations Director, Microsoft Italy; Paola Andreozzi, CSR Manager, Microsoft Italy; Mirta Michilli, Director General, Fondazione Mondo Digitale.
“Recent research indicates that digital skills are the most requested abilities on the labour market, both for companies and entrepreneurial or freelance projects to work as consultants to other companies. And millennials seem particularly suited to this type of mind-set,” explains Paola Cavallero, Marketing & Operations Director for Microsoft Italy, during her opening address. “However, as the last report published by the European Commission on the Digital Economy reveals, Italy must take further steps forward to fully enjoy the benefits of a digital economy. The lack of technological training is leading to a lack of STEM graduates and, consequently, fewer profiles than the EU average for the ICT sector. This type of education must begin at school, the pulsating heart of our country, and Microsoft feels this responsibility and will contribute to initiatives such as this one to promote a new spirit of enterprise in Italy.”
“Meet No Neet has become a reference model for all those working on the NEET Phenomenon in Italy, as evidenced by the recent “Ghost” Survey promoted by WeWorld,” emphasised Mirta Michilli, Director General of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale. “Meet No Neet is training a new generation to create their own professional future, their jobs and their enterprise. Even the AlmaDiploma Report has underlined the role of transversal skills for the success of youth in the working world: problem solving, open thinking, leadership, etc. Project Meet No Neet allows students to design, share experiences, think critically and use digital technology in an inclusive manner.”
The image depicts the "genealogy" of Programme Meet No Neet: all the projects developed by schools for the original competition.
