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A quick web search reveals that the “Schools and Volunteer Work” Project, promoted by the Ministry of Education, began in 2003 and stopped in 2005 at the third edition.
The Annali dell’Istruzione provide a precious document entitled Schools and Volunteer Work “More can be done”. These are the acts of the national meeting held in Turin (16-17 May 2003) that contain the first National Report on “Schools and Volunteer Work” produce in May 2003 by the Piedmont Regional School Department. The second national meeting was held in Palermo in 2005, but here is no trace of a second report.
There also are some individual agreements stipulated between the Ministry and blood donor volunteer associations (AVIS) and a couple of presentations made on important occasions such as the World Volunteering Day, but is this enough?
In a book entitled The Challenges of the Italy that Invests in the Future, the National Forum for the Third Sector dedicates an entire paragraph to the relationships between schools and volunteer work:
“Public schools, which have played a key role in the creation of the country’s cultural identity, are undergoing a worrying reduction of their civic training role and suffering the competition of other knowledge sources that propose attractive models that are, however, basically interested in creating conformism and consumerism rather than the intellectual and civil growth of citizens.”
The Fondazione Mondo Digitale and Telecom Italia have introduced TeleMouse 3.0 Award to launch the educational value of school for the development of knowledge, competences and values. The experience of 6000 students that have acted as tutors in the digital literacy courses for elders is an excellent stepping stone for the creation of a network of volunteers, interested in investing in knowledge and promoting digital volunteer work at elderly centres to fight the digital divide of the over sixties.
