The Minister of Education visited the San Firenze building in Florence, and was met by Mayor Dario Nardella.
Florence – Promoting the spread of innovative projects in the educational and teaching fields by reconstructing and redeveloping schools to guarantee well-being and a right to education for all children and young people by fostering the search, discovery and nurturing of individual talents. In short, this is the goal of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Italian Ministry of Education and the Andrea Bocelli Foundation which was renewed for the International Day of Education, in accordance with the Foundation’s mission of “Empowering people and communities”, and with the objectives of Agenda 2030’s goal 4.7.
The document establishes a working group for the strategic planning and development of innovative experiences which the Foundation has gained in the field and in hospital schools where the creation of educational-teaching spaces that are aesthetically welcoming and functional becomes necessary to foster the significance of the school experience of the children and young people who attend hospital schools and their families.
ABF’s more than a decade of experience in the use of the most innovative digital technologies to support relationship-building, knowledge and learning processes are central to this. “Education – Education Minister Bianchi wished to emphasize at the end of his meeting with ABF’s top management – “means identifying the horizon and being able to go beyond it. The Foundation does this in Italy and around the world. It is doing so in the most difficult situations, by placing young people and children at the center and not merely teaching them to write, speak and sing but – more importantly – to live together. In other words, it is a work-guide for everyone on how to rethink about school”.
“Children and young people – highlighted our Founder Andrea Bocelli – “are the future. Today we are strengthening and solidifying this educational initiative, because we are driven by a hope for a better future, both individually and collectively”.
ABF has been working for more than 10 years with a systemic approach that has education as its focus. It starts with the creation of schools, designed and constructed thanks to the work of a multidisciplinary team of experts, and then moves on to the development of innovative educational projects to support and integrate the quality and inclusiveness of the educational pathways.
The ABF Digital Lab project helps create and maintain the conditions that make the new educational technologies tools for supporting, integrating and enriching relationship-building, knowledge and learning processes. Currently in addition to the ABF schools, the project is active in 5 Italian Children’s Hospitals (the Gaslini Institute in Genoa, the Burlo Garofolo Pediatric Institute in Trieste, the Salesi Hospital in Ancona, the Santobono- Pausilipon Pediatric Hospital in Naples and the Meyer Children’s Hospital in Florence) thanks to the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed with the Italian Ministry of Education and to the collaboration with the Italian Pediatric Hospitals Association (AOPI). Our hope is to reach more and more hospitals in order to foster the inclusion and empowerment of sick children (more than 70,000 in Italy) who are either hospitalized or day hospital patients and attending the school within the hospital.
