Quality education
Fostering youth education and employability
Intesa Sanpaolo supports specific initiatives focused on fostering youth education and employability, tackling educational poverty and early school leaving, as well as promoting diversity and inclusion. Through these initiatives, the Group aims to empower young people, bridge gaps in education and technology, and advance women in leadership, all contributing to long-term social progress and equality.
UN SDG SUPPORTED
Among the many initiatives designed to empower young people and ensure equal opportunities for all, regardless of background, the following are specified:
Giovani e Lavoro (Youth and Work) Programme
The Program was born in 2019 from the partnership between Intesa Sanpaolo and Generation Italy - a non-profit foundation of McKinsey & Company - to facilitate young people's access to the world of work by offering companies qualified personnel through free training courses to 5,000 unemployed young people between 18 and 29 years old. The goal is to have at least 75-80% of the trained young people hired by companies. The training programs focus on experiential and short-term courses (3-14 weeks) on specific professional sectors, identified among those most difficult to fill in the Italian job market: salesperson in the Retail sector; staff for the Hospitality, Food & Beverage sector; numerical control machine (CNC) operator; Java developer; Salesforce developer; systems engineer, Cybersecurity analyst and Data Engineer.
3,000 young people to be trained
Over 8,000 students (aged between 18 and 29 years)
have applied for admission to the program
>21,940 students interviewed
> 1,940 students interviewed
and > 940 students trained/in training through 36 courses
Generation4Universities Project
Intesa Sanpaolo is the main sponsor of the project, developed by Generation and McKinsey & Company, aimed at helping students in their final year of university to start a successful professional career. The program provides university students from disadvantaged backgrounds with training, mentoring and transversal skills to improve employability. The fourth edition of the program involved 90 students, 50 universities and 19 Italian companies as partners.
90 students involved
50 universities involved
19 Italian companies involved
Futura Initiative
It's a project promoted by Save the Children, Forum Inequality and Diversity and Yolk, with the collaboration of Intesa Sanpaolo, against female educational poverty, educational failure and school dropout. It promotes growth and autonomy paths through personalised training courses.
300 girls and young women involved including 50 young mothers
~320 educational plans activated
Zeta Lab and Modular Offer programmes
Group’s people mentor secondary school students in over 40 schools, focusing on transversal skills and career guidance.
Ecosistema Educativo per i giovani e le famiglie di Napoli Nord
It focuses on reducing educational poverty in northern Naples by offering vocational training and employment services to 250 students.
Look4ward Observatory and Digital Restart program
Look4ward Observatory: a strategic tool to identify the skills required by companies in the future, promoting upskilling and reskilling for professionals, and supporting new enterprises.
Digital Restart: a programme aimed at training and placing in the labor market unemployed people aged 40-50 through the financing of a Master in Data Analysis in order to develop new digital skills and re-enter the job market. The fourth edition was concluded in 1Q24, involving a total of 100 participants from the beginning of the programme, of which 56 found new employment. In November 2024, two new editions started in Milan and Rome, involving 50 participants.
Spread of financial culture
The Group's activities also include initiatives to support financial inclusion aimed at young people. These initiatives respond to their educational and training needs, highlighting the importance of financial literacy and spreading financial culture to enable individuals to make informed decisions and improve their economic well-being.
Other initiatives to spread the financial culture
The Museum reached more than 100,000 people with educational activities for students and adults, including guided tours, workshops, outreach events, and training programmes, also delivered online. In 2024, new modular programmes were introduced, such as EduFin&Fun for younger children (6-14 years old) and the programme for transversal skills and for career guidance (PCTO - percorso per le competenze trasversali e per l’orientamento for teenagers (15-18 years old), to promote understanding of economic concepts and prepare the new generations for future financial decision-making processes. In addition, 116 awareness events were organized on topics such as online security, investment in human capital, and the connections between finance and other disciplines.
The initiative succeeded in continuing with the project in schools, involving nearly 700,000 pupils. Developed within the scope of the initiative Il Quotidiano in Classe (Daily Newspaper in Class), the project has evolved with new content and meetings in Italian schools, trying to facilitate the spread of an economic-financial culture among young people, providing them with useful knowledge support so as to make informed choices about their future and to foster the creation of responsible citizens.
Loans to support education
The Per Merito initiative is delivered as part of the Fund for Impact, a credit plafond for social impact activities; it was established in 2019 and confirmed in the 2022-2025 Business Plan. It enables the disbursement of loans to groups in society that would otherwise find it difficult to access credit despite their potential. In 2024 Intesa Sanpaolo financed about 107 million euro of Per Merito (in addition to about 30 million euro with university guarantees; considering both guarantees, there were over 16,300 students who received loans during the year).
A year of sustainability
Last updated 21 July 2025
Insights, events and projects for sustainability
