The Talent Hub is born, an opportunity for vocational training of under 29s

The University of Milan has always been committed to social work, and its aim is to improve the language skills of residents under 29 years of age in the San Siro area and Piazzale Selinunte in Milan. In fact, the Hub dei Talenti desk was inaugurated, which will aim to improve literacy and language skills in order to obtain Italian language certifications. A school and career guidance desk that the University will work on in collaboration with the non-profit employment agency Mestieri Lombardia in support of the Municipio 7 QuBì Network.

The Statale and the Politecnico di Milano are among the promoters of this initiative in this particular area of Milan where there is a very high presence of foreign citizens (they are about 50% of the inhabitants) who are not particularly familiar with the Italian language and who therefore find it difficult to find a job. To this must be added the conditions of social marginalisation that many of the residents face due to the difficulty of integrating into our reality. There are in fact as many as 85 nationalities in Municipality 7 who speak a variety of complex languages. The improvement of Italian language skills will be for people between 14 and 29 years of age, to whom the Hub dei talenti is addressed, an opportunity for inclusion but also for vocational training.

The desk is open every Friday 14.30 to 17.30 at the Off Campus space. A researcher from the university and an operator from Mestieri Lombardia are present in this space, while the Social Cooperative Comunità del Giambellino is also involved in the orientation of young people aged between 14 and 18 as part of the MiG Work project of the City of Milan. The students of the School of Linguistic and Cultural Mediation are also part of the project, they will in fact be involved in after-school activities and in supporting young people of foreign origin in afternoon activities.

According to Alessia Di Pascale, professor of European Union Law at the Milan State University and coordinator of the project, “the objective, starting from the first admission to the desk, will be to make the users feel engaged in a virtuous pathway aimed at a concrete objective, also collecting feedback and suggestions from them through satisfaction questionnaires, also useful for collecting data to assess the impact of the project”.

“The Talent Hub is part of the IN-JOBs4NEETs, a project now in its second year and realised with the support of JPMorganChase. It represents an important opportunity to act in the area, to develop a grassroots initiative capable of building a relationship of knowledge and trust over time with young people in the neighbourhood. It is a gradual approach, requiring a medium-term investment and teamwork between the various actors involved. Effort that we have seen, however, in the course of the IN-JOBs4NEETs project, to be the key element in engaging young people and successfully accompanying them towards their first work experience,’ says Federica Castellucci, regional coordinator of Mestieri Lombardia and project manager of IN-JOBs4NEETs.

In Municipality 7, the University of Milan is actively contributing to one of the 18 projects of Human Hall, the university’s hub of excellence dedicated to research and social inclusion. This programme is part of Spoke 6 of MUSA – Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action, funded through the PNRR, focused on innovation for sustainable and inclusive societies.