Intercultura: a year abroad for students

On 25 May at the Congress Center of Palazzo Belgioioso in Milan took place a round table themed after the value of interculturality as a pedagogical proposal capable of accelerating the internationalization of the Italian school and facilitating the opening of the young generations towards other cultures by focusing on knowledge of the other and respect for diversity.
During the event, 19 students received the scholarship from Dr. Elisa Zambito Marsala - Head of Social Development and University Relations, Intesa Sanpaolo and from Dr. Roberto Ruffino - Secretary General of Fondazione Intercultura. There were also present a student who started the program during the pandemic and some other students who brought their experience with Intercultura from different countries of the world.

Adopting intercultural behavior affects the identity of each individual, making them plural and capable of valuing every difference.
Interculturality strengthens listening and virtuous exchange for the search for points of contact and divergence which wisely put into dialogue enable mutual enrichment of values. All this generates citizenship education by promoting encounter, knowledge and open and flexible cultural development that transforms coexistence into sharing.

This is why, as part of our ongoing commitment to social inclusion, we promote the creation of intercultural initiatives convinced that these activities could have a considerable impact on promoting attention to the other and to the different. These are indispensable elements in building the future of the young generations and, consequently, of a multicultural and cohesive society.
In fact, since 2001 Intesa Sanpaolo has supported and collaborated with the Intercultura Foundation. 
In all these years - thanks to our contribution - 800 students from all over Italy and abroad have been able to participate in study abroad programmes.

Intercultura Foundation  promotes youth exchanges to encourage dialogue between cultures and the internationalization of Italian schools. Since the end of the Second World War, the Foundation has adopted student exchange as a means of promoting knowledge and solidarity between men and women. Since then, the Intercultura program has offered the opportunity to study in a foreign school for a year, or for a semester, with the possibility of being welcomed into a host country family. To encourage this mobility, also with the support of many supporters, the Foundation offers scholarships to deserving young people from poor families. It offers selected students a training course that covers the entire mobility period and allows them to fully grasp the meaning of the experience. At the end of the experience, students can join the association as volunteers. Furthermore, in collaboration with Italian and foreign universities, the Foundation offers families meetings and seminars to study the field of intercultural education as well as to guide them in choosing academic studies. Every year over 2,000 Italian secondary school children experience studying abroad and almost as many are welcomed into Italian families and schools.

The Intercultura 2023-24 program closed the process of selecting scholarship holders last November 2022. Thousands of applications were collected, confirming the young people’s undiminished desire to be protagonists in their own lives and their strong resilience towards the persistent uncertainty of the future (war in Europe, economic crisis and its real impacts on the cost of living etc.).