The project work consists of educational activities carried out in cooperation with secondary schools on the island of Elba on topical issues or issues considered important by the Foundation and the schools involved. It is generally carried out during Civil Education classes and involves reading in class one or more of the books donated by the Acqua dell'Elba Foundation on the chosen topic and then publicly discussing what has been learned.
During the 2022-23 school year the focus was female empowerment, a topic of great importance both to the Foundation and the Elba school community. The list of books dedicated to gender equality was carefully compiled by Marzia Camarda, cultural entrepreneur and expert on the subject. This was followed, from September to May 2022, by a joint project on gender equality and female empowerment.
In this case, the pupils worked on a book donated by the Foundation, "We Should All Be Feminists", by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. They identified its key issues and then discussed them during a debate at a public meeting on Friday 12 May 2022.
The students divided themselves into two groups to discuss the topics, just like in a real public forum, supporting or countering the basic argument of the chosen text. A true American-style debate with cross-questioning which highlighted the depth of the arguments and raised lots of points of discussion: is feminism an extremist movement? Is female victimisation exploited? Why is so little said about male stereotyping? Other topics of debate included the gender pay gap, inequality in sport, toxic feminism and stereotypical models in modern society.
All of the work (textual and pictorial) was collected in a booklet that will be used as a model for other schools.
