1. How do the projects promoted by the City of Milan integrate the needs of the local productive fabric without losing sight of the individual pathways and aspirations of young people?
This is a question we reflect on a great deal, and one that admits no easy resolution. On the one hand, Milan attracts a considerable number of young people owing to its extensive educational and professional opportunities across a wide range of fields, and it simultaneously expresses strong demand for labour in technical sectors as well as in tourism and retail. On the other hand, however, young people frequently report significant difficulties in achieving positive integration, in navigating complexity and in attaining adequate economic and professional conditions. Research tells us that this is the first moment in history in which five generations coexist in the workplace: for the younger generations, the perceived cultural and values-based distance from preceding ones is considerable, and organisations do not always succeed in recognising and valorising these new perspectives. A paradox thus emerges: a city that is increasingly in need of ensuring generational renewal across many productive sectors struggles to reach, retain and make young people feel genuinely welcomed. Through the Milan Youth Guidance Network (Rete Orientamento Giovani Milano), we are attempting to introduce spaces for reflection with the productive world on these issues, while simultaneously working at the cultural level — through a Young Advisory Group — to valorise the cultures, visions, languages and knowledge that young people are capable of bringing into and onto the world of work.
2. What indicators do you use to assess the real impact of youth promotion policies, beyond the most immediate quantitative data? When youth projects do not unfold as planned, what is the typical obstacle you encounter?
In addition to quantitative data monitoring, the various projects employ a range of qualitative evaluation instruments, which incorporate the perspectives of both practitioners and the young people involved. Many of our initiatives are designed so that young people themselves narrate their own experiences. Through the 100 idee programme, we have supported over 150 groups of young people between the ages of 14 and 35 in realising their own projects for the city. Many have produced videos, documentaries, interviews, photographic reports or magazines, and several youth editorial teams have given voice to the protagonists. Across all of these materials, significant indicators of real impact can be identified. When a young person tells you “this experience changed my life”, we know we have succeeded. Over the years, we have consistently seen strong results whenever projects have been conceived and realised together with young people. Presenting pre-determined proposals and treating them as passive recipients of policy does not work. It seems to us that what they seek are spaces — both physical and symbolic — in which they can engage with one another, feel welcomed and heard, and express themselves freely, while also taking on responsibility. The challenge in sustaining this kind of policy is that the city must then be ready to meet them: young people move quickly and willingly take us by surprise, and we cannot then step back.
3. If you were to design an ideal school-to-work transition experience from scratch in 2026, with no bureaucratic constraints, what form would it take?
We are genuinely attempting to do exactly that. The Milan Youth Guidance Network includes high-intensity educational pathways for young people in situations of disorientation. We come to know them, we build a relationship, we co-construct a personalised project with them and we make available what we call “Doti di crescita” (Growth Grants): a sum of money available for any experience that is useful for that particular project and that particular person, with no bureaucratic constraints. We awarded the first Grant shortly before Christmas: a 16-year-old boy was enrolled in an electrician’s course, which he hated and was on the verge of abandoning. He confided that he had a long-held dream — to become a hairdresser — but feared his family would never accept this decision. An experienced professional supported him through a conversation with his parents, found a hairdressing course he could enrol in, and used the Growth Grant to purchase the bag with all the materials and equipment he needed to attend. He sent us a photo of himself with the bag, moments after the courier delivered it, and it was a wonderful gift for us in the lead-up to Christmas. We need measures such as this — ones that allow people to have genuine experiences: it does not matter which, as long as they are real, authentic, embedded in the world and capable of igniting a fire, or at the very least a first spark.
4. Is there a piece of advice frequently given to young people about work that you believe needs to be entirely rethought today?
That they must adapt and make sacrifices. This is truly counterproductive rhetoric: first, those who are able to adapt generally do so without needing to be told — such exhortations tend to sound judgemental. Adapting is always demanding, and not everyone is always in the psychological, material or relational conditions to be able to do so. Second, in anyone’s life, meaning comes first, and only then — possibly — comes choice, commitment, effort and even some form of renunciation or sacrifice. Young generations are posing questions of meaning: what kind of world are they inheriting? What future lies ahead? What is worth growing up for and taking on responsibility? As adults, we should engage with these questions, which matter deeply, and accept first and foremost that we are being confronted with our own responsibilities, rather than assuming we have truths to dispense. If we listen for a moment, we also discover that young people often carry a demand for change that would benefit everyone, not just themselves: a better work-life balance, more ethics and values and less profit as an end in itself, greater attention to diversity, and so on.
5. Is there a change — even a small one — that in recent years has made you think we are moving in the right direction in supporting young people through the school-to-work transition?
Through the 100 idee programme, we issued an open call to the city: we invited public, private and third sector organisations — as well as individual professionals — to make themselves available to act as mentors for groups of young people, accompanying and supporting them in realising their own ideas, without ever substituting for them, simply standing alongside. Over one hundred organisations responded, representing a wide variety of fields. The groups were able to work with professionals from cinema, music and theatre, as well as organisations working in volunteering, fashion and craftsmanship. We do not know — nor are we particularly concerned — how many of them will eventually become professionals in this or that sector. What we do know is that they were able to have a meaningful experience in something that genuinely interests them, in a collective form, moving from idea to project and engaging with what it means to “do it as a profession”. Whatever work they choose to do in their lives, these are things they will carry with them. They will know how to come together with others to generate change. They will be women and men who think “If it doesn’t exist, we’ll make it” — which is indeed the tagline of 100 idee.
6. Could you recommend a book or a film that, in your view, effectively conveys your work and the importance of the issues you address?
What comes to mind is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, a reimagining of David Copperfield set in the modern-day Appalachian region. It conveys very powerfully what it means to be born into a system designed to make you fail, and what kind of struggle growing up can be. It is striking how the adult world surrounding Demon is an utter failure, and how at the same time it is a series of almost chance encounters that represent the possibility of a break, a leap forward, a way out. What is missing, however, is a collective dimension of redemption — something in which we believe strongly, as it often seems to us to be decisive, and which still appears very much alive in the imaginations of new generations. For this reason I would also cite Stranger Things. Beyond the commercial phenomenon, this series resonates with its young audience for many reasons, and watching it helps to focus on certain sensibilities: from mental health themes to adult fragility, from a world that seems on the verge of collapse to the “cultural” way out — that is, the discovery that emerging languages and visions, often dismissed as ephemeral or insufficiently serious by older generations, can in fact help you interpret reality and give it meaning. And at its centre lies a law as ancient as adolescence itself: find those beside you, recognise them as your peers, make the group your strength — and at that point you are saved, and in some way you also save the world.