VolontariaMENTE is an innovative volunteering project for LUISS students, which offers them a shared experience with a strong social impact.
More than 150 students at our university have signed up for this initiative and have decided to dedicate part of their holidays to projects based on solidarity and active participation, motivated by the desire to get involved as individuals and as a group. Each project represents a type of training based on direct interaction with a series of situations and issues that are close to us: living in bad neighborhoods, fighting against the mafia, surviving jail or malnutrition.
One of these, the Reality Program Summer Camp, which takes place in the neighborhood of Casal Bruciato and centers around the children of immigrants and political refugees, has just ended. For this project, students were able to lend a hand to Consel - Consorzio ELIS in organizing and running a summer camp for kids.
From July 8 until August 8, another group of young volunteers will go to the San Nicola di Lecce prison to work with 20 inmates, creating goods for the brand Made in Carcere (Made in Jail). The female students, coordinated by Luciana Delle Donne – a manager who works with sustainable business models and the founder of Officina Creativa (Creative Workshop), are involved in all phases of the production of these goods: from organization to logistics, from social marketing to the manufacture of bags and accessories under the social cooperative’s label.
The Libera Terra (Free Land) project involves working on lands confiscated from the mafia, where agricultural and restructuring activities are combined with education on legal issues with the local population. The final scheduled activity has been planned in conjunction with the Save the Children Italia network of humanitarian associations, with whom the students will work starting in October to implement a public awareness campaign on infant mortality.
"With this project and other similar ones that we are implementing in other Italian cities, LUISS wants to convey the principle of positive contagion to its students, a vision based on the values of solidarity and courage, a synthesis of education and the real world," stated Giovanni Lo Storto, LUISS Guido Carli’s General Manager. "This type of activity is very ethical, but also blends theory and practice, giving our students a set of tools that can help them become men and women capable of working towards the development that this country needs.