Roberta Poli: "Project Factor J was there at the right moment."
"I will begin by thanking everyone because Project Factor J was there for schools just at the right moment! I still remember at the beginning of May 2020, when we were invited to the presentation event. Since then, it became a reference point for all of us at school, locked down and dealing with distance learning. I still remember the special sessions that addressed empathy and illnesses that the students had never heard about. Above all, however, it was about sharing strong emotions in a period of fear, uncertainty and confusion.”
For the first time on stage at the annual meeting of a large pharmaceutical corporation, Janssen Italia (Johnson & Johnson Group), Prof. Roberta Poli presented Project Factor J and how day after day it transformed students into protagonists.
"The project is centred on empathy, our responsibility towards those less lucky than ourselves, in order to view classmates and friends in a different light by the end of the project. And this is exactly what we needed during a period of social distancing, masks, and reduced classes to avoid crowding. We were catapulted into a world where there was no space for our discomfort, other than letting go and ignoring things.”
The professor appreciated the rigorous scientific bent of the project and the live contributions by experts and patient associations. In addition to the patronage of the Higher Health Institute, there also were three institutional partners, two scientific partners and 13 patient associations participating in the project.
On stage, together with the professor from IIS Piaget-Diaz in Rome, there also was Laura Meija, an eighteen-year-old student from the Liceo Fermi in Bologna, an ambassador who explained how the collaborative Health Manifesto was produced.
"I did not expect that notwithstanding our young age we could be so aware of the needs of the new generations and our future. We are often viewed as the generation without values, without objectives. Quite on the contrary, Project Factor J helped us understand that we can be heard and that communications are fundamental. We hope this Manifesto will mark the beginning of true change.”
Here are some of the photos taken at the Janssen National Sales Meeting, held yesterday in Rome at the Marriot Hotel. For the first time, school was “auditioned” at a company event to present this transformative educational experience with a school project.
