In the last twenty years, Italian society and educational institutions have seen a profound transformation in the composition of the population, in relation to the progressive and high presence of boys and girls with non-Italian citizenship, often involved in the migratory paths of their parents, but especially in the most recent years, born in our country.

In Lombardy region, where the project takes place, the existence of local realities (urban and not) with high number of minors with foreign origin makes it increasingly necessary to train skills for the handling of multi-ethnic groups and classes and relationships with families.

Starting from the critical reading of the statistical data and from the work of CELIM, which together with the Colomba NGOs has been carrying out for decades a work for inclusion and enhancement of diversity, we have come to identify the needs of the Lombardy territory, through several meetings with managers, operators and users of socio-educational services.

The project aims to promote a transition from the multi-ethnic reality, understood as normalization of the plurality, to the construction of a real intercultural society, centred on the daily experience of the exchange, of dialogue and growth together. It means to overcome the integration as a simple homologation of differences, in order to achieve integration as mutual enrichment due to the diversity of cultures, such as okapi, strange and happy union between a giraffe and a zebra.  

In particular, the project, starting from the children of the schools, centres of aggregation and the parishes, intends:  

• Improving and diversifying the listening capacity of children and young people in order to increase understanding of the value of differences 
• To provide young people and adult concrete opportunities in which foreigners and Italians can forge ties, get to know each other and value each other’s diversity for the benefit of the whole community 
• Building a territorial network for global citizenship education.

1. Start-up seminar, with the presence of 150 teachers and educators.  
2. Educational pathways on the value of differences and listening: planning 300 educational interventions for groups and classes. They will end with the production of 60 illustrative murals of what has been learned.  
3. Laboratories for people aged over 16 years: 60 interventions for groups and classes.  
4. May events: they will be 53, including workshops, screenings, concerts, theatrical performances with the task of promoting the value of differences.  
5. Closing seminar about how to provide quality education that enhances differences, overcomes homologation and offers opportunities for everyone. There will be 250 children, educators, school managers, representatives of local authorities and migrant associations.  
6. Development of a local network. It will be used to design future inclusion initiatives and will consist of 60 local worktables coordinated by quarterly meetings.  
7. Participated research about inclusion. Operators and young people, with the support of a research organization, will collect the voice of 3,000 citizens and produce 15 illustrative videos.  
8. Local conferences about inclusion. There will be 15 conferences with 750 participants and will be organized thanks to the presence of the local network mentioned above.  

Mani Tese will be specifically involved in actions 2, 3, 4 and 6 (in the list) with particular regard to the west of Milan.