"Talento Plus" project

Acknowledging talent and rewarding excellence, brings value to professionalism and expertise and triggers the managerial heritage pivotal to lead to development in the entire social system. Excellence based on professionalism and expertise is the real engine of development. In fact, it enables social mobility and generates perspectives that are useful for tackling and solving the challenges of sustainability and equity that the world is facing. This is a crucial necessity for the country in the future.
In this difficult era, climate change, environmental sustainability, equity and social inclusion, the complexity of international relations, the expanding technology, the management of big data are urgent and relentless fields that require "talent", at all levels and in all its principles.

Talent is a condition generated by the mix of knowledge, including specialist and multidisciplinary knowledge, and the experience and skills acquired and strengthened in study and work opportunities. Sometimes, elements of cosmopolitan culture gained with international experiences are added to this mix, bringing the dimension of talent to levels of excellence. Surely, talent is a potential that must be fostered and supported with educational quality that works and brings the basic culture, especially if it is multidisciplinary and at the same time relational, to evolve into excellent performance.
Commitment, imagination and creativity are individual skills essential to improve and to make a difference by means of the achieved results.

These skills and abilities must be identified, trained and made visible to the community so that they can contribute to the building of the common good and to economic growth.
In this perspective, we believe it is essential to act to identify, support and encourage young people with distinctive talent, with the aim of fully enhancing their excellence, regardless of the economic and social conditions of the environments of origin. We firmly believe that the latter should not be elements of preclusions to access in advanced research contexts or in public institutions or private companies that promote innovation. We are convinced that action is needed to create the conditions, spaces and opportunities to enable young people to express their talent.

Knowledge and beliefs shared by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna and the Il Talento all'Opera Onlus Foundation, which are the origin of the recently launched collaboration, called Talento plus, which brings together institutions determined to have a role of reference for the development of merit and the care of talent, striving for its enhancement at the service of the community and the country.                                    
The collaboration takes the form of three project initiatives that put the student at the center, accompanying them in their orientation, choice and their course of study.

Recent sector studies confirm that the equity of social and economic development processes is strongly compromised. Individual choices to continue their studies or to enter the world of work are mainly dictated by the income and cultural level of  the family they belong to. The health emergency has cracked even more the fragile family balance and increased inequalities at the expense of students from the most difficult socio-economic backgrounds, reducing their chances of successfully completing their studies or undertaking university courses.
The Merit and Social Mobility 2.0 project promotes the enhancement of talent already among high school youth. Coordinated by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna as scientific director and carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, it accompanies deserving students of the penultimate year of upper secondary school from difficult socio-economic contexts during their orientation. An articulated and progressive path that offers informative and training workshops and experiential moments and moments of mentoring for personal growth. The program started last March and will run until February 2022 near the baccalaureate exam and university entrance.

The project - reflecting the distinctive ability of the 3 partners in their respective fields - intends to act as a collector of talents ready to face the challenges of the future.
The structure of the project is designed to collect in a database the profiles of students who, after a selective phase, will participate in the training activities promoted by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. Subsequently, the professional placement and the career path will be traced with the dual purpose of ensuring a capillary mapping of talent profiles and giving visibility to an area of high value for our country, providing concrete, measurable and comprehensive data. This talent bank will take the form of a portal to which companies and institutions will be able to access. It will be a space where job supply and demand will meet, to facilitate access to the world of work for young talents.                                                       
Through the network of merit, promoted by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna with the collaboration of the University Colleges of Merit, the mapping can be extended to create a unique portfolio of profiles. It will offer the opportunity to know the social, economic, geographical determinants of talent and follow the student's path after training, in order to grasp the strengths and any improvements for the training activities of the paths of excellence.
The project will be completed with the promotion of Talent Mapping as an innovative tool to guide public and private policy actions in the search for young talents.

The Talento Plus Allievi project - also born from the collaboration of the partners - aims to accompany deserving students from fragile socio-economic backgrounds, in their orientation and choice of university studies. The Project involves the implementation of specific interventions and actions that focus on the key sectors and areas of the School's training offer, including PhD Courses. To all these, there are also scholarships designed to facilitate access to courses, residential facilities and also international mobility.

The Bank, like the Scuola Sant’Anna and the Talento all'Opera Foundation, pay close attention to the training of young people and the enhancement of talent. The collaboration activated will facilitate access to multidisciplinary environments and will enable young students to approach the frontiers of knowledge.
He will also be able to generate in young people the awareness that talent also requires the ability to be entrepreneurs of oneself to bring greater value to one's aspirations and to make the most appropriate choices.
Together, the company, academy and associations will still be alongside young people for a long time to stimulate them and to create the right environment in which their growth can be fulfilled.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    may, 2021