A summer of opportunities to learn and play, for children who risk being left behind
Arcipelago Educativo is an innovative project promoted and co-designed by Save the Children and Fondazione Agnelli, created in collaboration with a network of local partners and made possible thanks to contributions from Bolton Hope Onlus Foundation in the first edition and Exor in subsequent ones. Its goal is to foster the psychological and physical well-being of children and youths, the consolidation and recovery of basic and transversal skills, relationship between peers, and a more adequate educational environment in families.
The project was born in 2020 to provide a concrete answer to urgent needs that emerged during that summer, still marked by the Covid-19 emergency, with the ambition to define a training proposal, organisational solutions, best practices and a national model that could retain meaning, usefulness and the ability to inspire future initiatives.
In the summer of 2020, Arcipelago Educativo engaged 450 girls and boys for 12 weeks in 6 cities (Turin, Milan, Venice Marghera, Aprilia, Naples and Bari). Activities were carried out in 16 educational “islands” and 8 educational centres in neighbourhoods with a high rate of educational poverty, involving 13 schools in the identification of the most vulnerable students’ educational needs.
Arcipelago Educativo then continued throughout the 2020-2021 school year with support from Exor: 1,700 primary and junior secondary school pupils in 5 cities (Turin, Milan, Aprilia, Bari and Reggio Calabria) were helped to recover learnings and to study.
The 2022 edition has engaged almost 600 children in 9 territories. Thanks to the collaboration with FBK-Irvapp, the 2022 edition of Arcipelago Educativo will also be rigorously assessed with a counterfactual method to measure its impact on participating students’ learning and non-cognitive abilities. This will provide useful evidence to define more effective policies against educational poverty.
The 2023 edition involved more than 540 girls, boys and teenagers aged 9 to 14, attending 38 schools in 17 Istituti Comprensivi in 8 cities: Turin, Milan, Venice-Marghera, Aprilia (LT), Brindisi, Naples, Rosarno (RC) and Palermo.