Raising awareness among young people about protecting biodiversity. This is the goal of the Biodiversity4Young initiative that we launched in May 2022 along with Legambiente to involve high school students in specific Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali e l'Orientamento (Paths for Transversal Skills and Placement).
“Biodiversity training, which the young people took part in with great interest and enthusiasm, aims to give them useful tools to become active participants in protecting and promoting natural and environmental resources in their local areas.”
– Filippo Rodriguez, Head of Sustainability in Italy
In 2022, the initiative involved about 250 young people from nine high schools in Sicily, Calabria, Tuscany, Lombardy, Marche, Abruzzo, and Sardinia. After the success of this first phase, Biodiversity4Young will resume in the second half of 2023 with the participation of more students throughout Italy.
Our commitment to educating young people
We promote training and continuous learning with innovative initiatives dedicated to the younger generation because we believe in knowledge as an equally important form of energy for sustainable development in an environmental, economic, and social sense.
One such project is Bee4Education: imparare dalle api (Bee4Education: learning from bees) aimed at elementary and secondary school students. This initiative combines raising awareness about sustainability, which is at the core of our Group’s strategy, and making the most of what local areas have to offer.
Biodiversity is our strength and, if we lose it, it could become our weakness, contributing to food and energy insecurity, making us more vulnerable to natural disasters, reducing the overall level of health in society, and impacting the availability and quality of water resources.
This is why preserving biological diversity is one of the great challenges of the present and near future, and getting young people involved is crucial.
"The scope of this project comes directly from our Group's need and desire to bring the topic of biodiversity into schools, to take it straight to kids,” explains Emiliano Borello, Project Manager of Sustainability for Italy.
"The participation of our colleagues locally was crucial because it allowed us to bring in people who work in these contexts every day, and to be able to tell the students about what Enel already does in terms of biodiversity protection. Letting them know about our sustainability projects in general."
The Biodiversity4Young initiative is related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN's 2030 Agenda. Specifically, in terms of SDG 4 (Quality Education), an aim our Group has direct commitments to, SDG14 (Life Below Water), and SDG 15 (Life On Earth).
The 22-hour training program included theoretical lessons along with practical workshops and educational visits in the local areas where we have a presence:
8 hours in the classroom to introduce students to issues related to biodiversity protection, with meetings and discussions on ecosystem preservation along with naturalists and our experts to talk about Sustainability projects;
4 hours of citizen science workshops to put the theories and tools learned about into practice;
8 hours of group work to identify threats to the local area, along with ways to protect it and make the most of what it has to offer;
2 hours of online meetings at the end, where all of the classes taking part in the project present their respective proposals.
“The most interesting thing is the natural beauty that this park offers, and I learned that biodiversity is exactly this. It is about all living things, plants, and animals within a given habitat”, said Alessandro, one of the students involved in the project in Abruzzo, during a visit to Lake Campotosto.
“Nature is fundamental for human life, and, unfortunately, climate change shows us how it is ever more important to protect it.”
Listen to Enel Radio’s podcast with Elena Ferrario, Legambiente’s coordinator for the project, and Federico Legrenzi, a student at Fantoni Math & Science High School in Clusone who took part in Biodiversity4Young!
