Schools cannot ignore the various forms of fragility affecting adolescents’ lives: from illness to emotional isolation, eating disorders and a pervasive sense of disorientation. With this aim in mind, the first series of free webinars ‘Training for life – turning fragility into opportunity’ was created by the Bullone Foundation and Deascuola with the support of the Guido Venosta Foundation, which has also been involved in health promotion and education for many years.

The first edition consisted of four webinars aimed at 6,200 secondary school teachers and involving 2,500 students. These webinars offered those who are in close contact with boys and girls every day a series of concrete tools: a training course with targeted content, testimonials and good practices in response to the growing need for listening, understanding and orientation in schools.

The experience of the Bullone Foundation, which works with young people who have experienced serious illnesses, offered an authentic insight into the possibility of transforming fragility into awareness, growth and value. This is an approach that the Guido Venosta Foundation has chosen to support, recognising the strategic role of schools in preventing forms of profound distress.
This support also stems from a shared sensitivity: Giuseppe Caprotti, president of the Guido Venosta Foundation and one of the founders of the Bullone Foundation, has repeatedly emphasised the importance of building alliances between education, health and culture to address the new needs of young people in a systemic and profound way.

With the aim of strengthening this link, the project also provided teachers with authoritative references and useful tools to deal with complex situations, not only in emergencies, but in everyday educational relationships.

Due to the positive feedback from the first edition of ‘Training for Life’, a new webinar series is already planned for 2026, with the aim of involving even more schools and further developing the dialogue between adults and adolescents.

THE EXPERTS
This year, the webinars – distributed through the Deascuola network, one of the leading school publishing companies in Italy – involved recognised experts in the psychological, educational and clinical fields:

• Alessia Lanzi, a psychologist and president of the Minotauro cooperative, which has been a point of reference for adolescents for new forms of fragility for thirty years;
• Ettore Corradi and Marcella Tajani, respectively director and psychiatrist of the Struttura Complessa di Dietetica e Nutrizione Clinica of the ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, a national centre for eating disorders;
• Paola Missana, General Director of the Galdus vocational school in Milan, which offers educational paths tailored to the emerging needs of young people.

THE WEBINAR SERIES
The following topics were covered in the training sessions of the first edition of the webinar (available to teachers on the website: https://formazione.deascuola.it/allenarsi-alla-vita/):

• Staying well in today’s world, turning difficulties and fragility into opportunities: a meeting for teachers to accompany boys and girls to recognise and overcome difficulties, discover themselves, understand their limits and resources, and train themselves for life and future challenges.
• Recognising fragility and supporting it: experts in dialogue on psychological fragility, dropping out of school, social withdrawal, digital addiction, and behavioural disorders
• Seeing, touching and transforming scars: a meeting for teachers to develop hard and soft skills through the methodologies and activities pioneered by the Bullone Foundation, which can be tested in and out of the classroom, in line with the new guidelines on teaching Civic Education.

At the end of the course, a meeting dedicated to students included the testimony of two young people who, through their work with the Bullone Foundation, recounted how their experience of illness marked a positive turning point in their lives. This powerful message spoke directly to their peers, highlighting the transformative potential of fragility.

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Guido Venosta Foundation
The Guido Venosta Foundation intends, by honouring the memory of Guido Venosta and changing his experiences, to promote and contribute to educating the public on the highest cultural ideals and solidarity. Founded on 27 June 2000, it is now chaired by Giuseppe Caprotti, Guido Venosta’s grandson and a supporter of the Bullone Foundation since its inception. Guido Venosta was one of the architects of the AIRC (Italian Association for Cancer Research), which he ran from 1966 to 1996. The Foundation operates according to four guidelines: protection of health and the environment, promotion of culture, and solidarity. www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org

Bullone Foundation
The Bullone Foundation is a third sector organisation founded by Milan-based entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Niada in 2012. The mission is to accompany adolescents and young adults with serious illness experiences in rediscovering their identity beyond their illness, building together paths of reintegration into social and professional life. The intention is to bring about a paradigm shift to build a world in which illness is not an insurmountable obstacle, but an experience that can be welcomed, faced, shared and transformed. www.bullone.org
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D Scuola
D Scuola is one of the leading educational publishing houses in Italy. The company, which has been part of the Mondadori Group since December 2021, operates in the market through various brands, including Deascuola with production aimed at institutions of all levels. It publishes texts, manuals, guides, supplementary digital content, eBooks and applications for study and teaching from primary school to university. Since 2013, D Scuola has been a training provider accredited by MIUR, organising training courses for schools and teachers. Its mission is to contribute, together with teachers and families, to educating young people and thus to building the society of the future. This is a delicate task that is carried out every day with dedication, involving a high level of expertise and a sense of civic responsibility.