The Mediobanca Group Renews its Support for the Cometa Foundation’s “Oliver Twist” School

The Mediobanca Group has renewed its social commitment to the Cometa Foundation through a new partnership to support a training programme for the students of the “Oliver Twist” school, this time in the textile processing sector. 

The new project is called “Tessiamo il futuro (Weaving the Future): Innovation and sustainability in the textile sector”, and its objective is to provide training for young people to enable them to find work in the textile production chain, from designing to actually making the fabrics, to application and product packaging, with a particular focus on digital skills and environmental sustainability, both of which pose crucial challenges for the sector’s development.

Through the school-enterprise model, the objective is to build and develop the specific capabilities required in order to help the young people at the “Oliver Twist” school to approach the workplace, offering tailor-made courses to help tackle the phenomenon of early leaving school, and encouraging them to complete their training successfully and so make themselves employable.

The three-year project involves around 300 training courses, with a hundred students taking part each year and the involvement of 55 teachers, co-teachers and tutors from the school. Particular attention will be devoted to young people in vulnerable situations and to female empowerment processes, promoting an inclusive training model.

The renewal of the Mediobanca Group’s support for i is consistent with its objectives in terms of developing social inclusion as a key driver for creating value for the communities in which it operates, with reference in particular to younger people, especially those in vulnerable situations.

“We are proud to renew our partnership with Cometa, following the success of the Academy of Woodworking: our aim is to combine promoting social inclusion with providing talented young people with training in productive sectors that are strategic for the nation of Italy. This project seeks not only to build and develop the skills necessary to give these young people a future in employment terms, but also to promote a model of inclusive excellence, consistent with our social commitment”, said Giovanna Giusti del Giardino, Mediobanca Group Chief Sustainability Officer.

“At Cometa we firmly believe that every person has value. The challenge in some cases is to ensure that it is recognized and enabled to emerge, a view that Mediobanca has shared with us for some years now. In this partnership, the aim is to come alongside and involve the textile students in a professional training programme that will enable them to work ‘for real’, to gain experience of beauty and enjoy continual sources of inspiration, to be able to develop their skills in a sector that is continuously changing. It’s a challenge that is an important one: to be able to come alongside these young people and help them to grow personally and professionally, so that each can find their own path and make their own contribution to the world they live in by using their unique talents”, said Giovanni Figini, Headmaster of the Cometa Foundation “Oliver Twist” school.

The effectiveness of the partnership with Cometa is demonstrated by the results achieved in the Academy of Woodworking project, the social artisanal enterprise set up in 2018 from the partnership between the Mediobanca Group and the Cometa Contrada degli Artigiani social co-operative.

In the five years of the partnership, a total of 332 students have been received training in the woodworking sector through the “Oliver Twist” school, and twenty-nine specific and six general apprenticeships have been completed by young people in difficult social, economic or personal situations. Of the school’s students in the woodworking sector, 95% continued with new studies or entered employment following the first phase of training. Furthermore, a total of six young people from difficult situations have also been recruited and employed permanently in the Contrada degli Artigiani’s carpentry, furniture restoring and decoration workshops, while ten new expert artisans, collaborators and tutors have been employed.

The Mediobanca Group has actively contributed to the project through corporate volunteering initiatives: over 130 Group volunteers have devoted time to Cometa, in activities ranging from providing support with studies and carrying out maintenance on both properties and park areas.

Milan, 22 October 2024