FUTURAMA: In Palma di Montechiaro students and community design the educational future
Palma di Montechiaro dedicated a day to a question that concerns the entire territory: how to build an educating community capable of truly supporting its young people. On Friday, November 21, the G. B. Odierna Higher Education Institute in Palma di Montechiaro hosted the Futurama Educating Community development event, a project selected by Con i Bambini as part of the Fund to combat childhood educational poverty and co-financed by Fondazione Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, which over the past two years has worked on developing STEAM skills, soft skills and career orientation for students in the provinces of Agrigento and Trapani.
The opening of the day brought together the school and local institutions in a shared moment. The school Principal, municipal representatives, the Director of the Territorial Area of Agrigento of the Regional School Office, law enforcement and religious authorities expressed a common position: the need to work together on the growth of young people. The Community Foundation of Agrigento and Trapani – project coordinator – placed this framework within the trajectory of Futurama, emphasizing that innovation and digital skills produce real effects only when training dialogues with the territory and its fragilities. In this perspective, the launch of the experimentation of the territorial anti-dropout dashboard becomes a tool to better understand the local situation and coordinate interventions more effectively.
Students led the first participatory moment through the STEAM Walk, a walk among prototypes, digital projects, robotics experiences, cyber security, sustainability, civic technologies and orientation to STEAM professions. The paths taken in recent years have shown how technologies, when accompanied by constant work on transversal skills, become a means to imagine concrete solutions and not just a didactic exercise. The result, observed as a whole, tells the story of a school that, when given the conditions to experiment, produces ideas and collaboration.
Following this, the dialogue between LUMSA professors Umberto Di Maggio and Lidia Scifo highlighted a point that often remains implicit. Technical skills matter, but it is the ability to interpret contexts, work in groups, and recognize changes in the labor market that makes the difference in the medium term. Questions addressed to the audience, through interactive surveys, showed widespread awareness of the distance that still separates schools and businesses, a theme that requires continuity rather than declarations of intent.
The next phase was dedicated to co-designing the school of the future. Students, teachers, third sector, civil and religious institutions sat at the same tables and reasoned together on more flexible learning environments, more engaging teaching methods, and stronger relationships between school and families. The urgency emerged of an education that includes skills that are decisive today, such as emotion management and financial awareness, more empathetic listening, continuous dialogue between teachers and students, and evaluation that accompanies rather than judges. All these voices do not describe an abstract model but a concrete experience of what it means to design a school capable of supporting young people in their real paths.
The presence of the Director of the Territorial Area of Agrigento of the Regional School Office, the Deputy Mayor, law enforcement and religious representatives strengthened the collective value of the day. The new anti-dropout dashboard, launched with the mapping of the local educating community's stakeholders, will become operational support to better understand the fragilities of young people and guide decisions in the coming years.
The event highlighted a reality that the territory knows well. The critical issues are not episodic; they are part of a structured framework that requires continuous and coordinated responses. This is why the school cannot remain isolated, and the community cannot limit itself to recording what does not work. An educating community grows when it unites responsibility, listening and planning, and when it gives young people not only a symbolic role but the opportunity to contribute to processes. The challenge now is to transform what emerged into stable commitments, capable of making an impact over time.
The Futurama project was selected by Con i Bambini as part of the Fund to combat childhood educational poverty and co-financed by Fondazione Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. The Fund stems from an agreement between banking foundations represented by Acri, the National Forum of the Third Sector and the Government. It supports interventions aimed at removing economic, social and cultural obstacles that prevent the full enjoyment of educational processes by minors. To implement the Fund's programs, the social enterprise Con i Bambini was established in June 2016, a non-profit organization wholly owned by Fondazione CON IL SUD. www.conibambini.org