Lorenzo Dente, 20 years old, and his classmates won the Meet No Neet Competition. The students from Itis Gallileo Ferraris in Naples, in fact, placed first with the social innovation project entitled “Ripuliamo portando innovazione” (Clean Up and Innovate) in the competition organised by Project Meet No Meet, promoted by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale in collaboration with Microsoft, Roma Capitale and local schools, to reward the best social innovation and entrepreneurship projects addressing local needs.
Lorenzo defines himself as “a normal kid from Scampia. I have lived here since I was born. I attended the Virgilio IV middle school right in front of the Vela Rossa in Scampia and then studied computers science at Itis Ferraris. I love computers and programming and have fun with algorithms and graphics programmes. In class, we always compete to come up with the most efficient algorithm.”
Lorenzo would like to leave Naples, though. “There are few opportunities here. I would like to go abroad to gain more experience and then come back and stay with my family.”
“Most of my friends have dropped out of school,” explains Lorenzo, “even my brother who is now looking for a job in Germany. Before meeting people at Microsoft, I though no one listened to young people, but now I know that there are companies that do.”
Today, ready to fly to the Redmond Microsoft Corporation, Lorenzo has his first opportunity for a great experience at his age. From April 30 to May 2, he will participate in the YouthSpark Summit as a beneficiary and testimonial for Project Meet No Neet, part of the Global Microsoft YouthSpark Programme, that aims to create new learning and employment opportunities for over 300 million youth in 100 countries by 2015.
The Microsoft Summit has also invited final beneficiaries to improve the discussion. The objective is to understand how the local projects effectively “make the difference” and how many young men and women are ready to face the risks involved in an entrepreneurial challenge.
In Redmond, Lorenzo will explain what he has accomplished with Project Clean Up and Innovate that was conceived to “solve issues related to waste and illegality in our city.”
“Kids don’t buy bus tickets and throw garbage on the roads, even precious recyclable material. As a matter of fact, we collect recyclable materials, sell them and use the revenue to purchase local transportation tickets to reward those citizens who help us collect recyclable waste.
The first citizens that we involved were Neets and we are also looking for school dropouts. We are planning to develop a web site to attract more participants and a database of collaborators. At school, we also started a creativity lab with the help of a designer and a software application for designing artistic objects with recycled materials. The objects are then sold on the web and at events in Scampia to fund further public transport ticket purchases. In this way, the project becomes self-sustainable.”
