"It is important for us to be here at Didacta because as CNOS-FAP we need to innovate our way of doing formation, to keep up with the times to make young people always ready to face new challenges, with the ancient values that tradition brings with it," said Fr. Fabrizio Bonalume, Director General of CNOS-FAP.
"We present ourselves together with CNOS-FAP and it is important for us that formation and education are seen by people as one. The dream we have is for people to know that Don Bosco's Preventive System is alive and operating in over 144 schools and 62 Vocational Training Centers, with a considerable number of pupils," explains Fr. Stefano Mascazzini, National President of CNOS Scuola - Salesians for Schools.
The "Education and Innovation" workshop, held on 9 March, aimed to present the Salesian experience in the educational system. One of the highlights was the presentation of the experience of the digital school of Sesto San Giovanni. "After Didacta," explained Tommaso Franchini, secondary school teacher and head of didactics, "the challenge for the Salesian school is to continue in this direction, hence find the new points, the new paradigm shifts that await the school, such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality, integrate them into our lessons to give more and more to the children in their race towards tomorrow.”
"The service of the Salesians in favor of young people in Schools and Vocational Training," was instead the title of the panel held by Fr. Fabio Attard, coordinator of Salesian and lay formation in Europe. "The presence of young people in our Salesian schools continues to recall what their history has recalled to Don Bosco: a lot of attention to their history, to the context they live in, our great ability to know how to meet them where they are, and our ability to offer them all possible opportunities for a dignified future that has the cultural, human, refined dimension, as well as the values dimension."
Didacta is also an opportunity to weave a network of relationships, as Fabrizio Tosti, national director of the CNOS-FAP educational offer, said. "This is a moment to create relationships, networks and synergies between educational institutions, but above all, for vocational training, with technology providers who can become contacts of excellence for our VETs. The significance of the Salesian presence at Didacta is to continue to follow in the furrow already traced by Don Bosco: for him, innovation in the first workshops created in Turin in 1850 was the fundamental element."
For Fr. Roberto Dal Molin, President of CNOS, the Salesians' participation in Didacta serves to "present and exhibit the ideas and beautiful experiences taking place in our scholastic and vocational training centers in Italy, and to be infected by the ideas that exist in school innovation in Italy today. A beautiful and rich experience of presentation and contagion.”
Also noteworthy during the fair was the presentation by the Special Circumscription of Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta (ICP) of the experience of the "Maker Lab", set up in various oratories thanks to the "Labs To Learn" project, which aims to give a "second chance" to minors and young people at risk of exclusion from school and training and to promote the strengthening of their logical, scientific and technological (STEM) skills, transversal skills, self-esteem and the alphabets essential for continuity in education.
