School is out, but crowdfunding is in! The slogan? “My future? It’s up to me!” Students take up the challenge to improve their neighbourhood, create new local work opportunities and exchange knowledge and competences with other generations.
Recycling labs that transform waste into fashionable objects, old machines and tools transformed into modern Fab Labs for residents, cars that become homes for the homeless, a peer counselling office in schools …
The #itsuptome campaign blossoms out of Phyrtual.org, the innovation-oriented on-line interactive environment – integrated with a crowdfunding platform - for sharing knowledge, projects and experiences on social innovation. Currently, students from five schools have started seven crowdfunding campaigns for social innovation projects developed for Project Meet no Neet. “Meet No Neet” is part of the Microsoft Global Youthspark Programme that provides students with innovative tools – from experiential education to project management - to acquire the competences necessary to access the job market.
The students at Itis G. Galilei di Scampia were tired of being renowned for the garbage and criminality in which they lived … so they turned the garbage into work and earn money to fight school dropouts and youth unemployment.
Roman students from the Liceo artistico Argan have redesigned the areas and purpose of the school’s internal courtyard. Now, it no longer is abandoned and functional furnishings in recycled materials allow it to be used as a waiting area and atrium.
Studnets at Itis Mattei in Isernia are also involved in a double social innovation project that transforms items. They have designed a mobile home, a car that can be transformed into a miniature house during calamities or to help the homeless. They have also turned the school’s old mechanical laboratory into an open digital craftsmanship workshop, a Fab Lab.
A group of students at the Gobetti School in Genoa is providing a peer counselling service to all the students at the school (ca. 900),
Class 5D at the Liceo C. Cavalleri di Parabiago (Milan) has restored an area where citizens can experience beauty and learn how to take care of it. The park includes foot and cycle paths with a series of themes (perfumed garden, agility dog, etc.), gathering spots (bocce for the elders, eco-sustainable games, kiosk and Wi-Fi), etc.
And these are not just ideas! They are true and tested projects on which the students are already at work! It takes less than a minute to help support a project. Just go to phyrtual.org select “Aiuta un progetto” (help a project) and choose which project to donate money to. The #itsuptome campaign reaches abroad wit the “My future? It's up to me!” slogan and the #itsuptome hashtag.
