Only The Brave Foundation supports community activity in schools throughout Italy
Listens, tells, and confronts to find that it is easier to overcome their weakness together. The commitment of giving voice to discomfort teenagers and transforming situations at risk into opportunities for introspection. This is WeFree’s San Patrignano prevention project that Only the Brave Foundation has decided to adopt, starting a collaboration that will come in act in a number of interventions in the Northern Italian region of Veneto, this in the coming months and then other Italian regions in 2018, aimed at having a direct and positive impact on the youths, because WeFree not only literally means “we are free”, but it means living, loving, having fun, without any substance conditioning the way of being or feeling free.
Every year the WeFree project involves about 50,000 students and is born from the forty-years of experience of San Patrignano. Aware of the usefulness of information on the risks associated to the use of substances, WeFree’s team has created forms (shows, school meetings, debates) capable of responding to requests from educational agencies, organizations and foundations that best fit teenagers’. Since 2002, the residents of the Community carry all over Italy their direct witness and the message of a positive and responsible lifestyle.
In fact, the collaboration will result in several performances for middle and high school students, where the protagonists on stage will be residents of San Patrignano, who will tell their past and the hard work they do to create their present. Stories, songs and emotions, together with scientific information on drug risks, will involve students in peer-to-peer communication, designed to offer so many reflections.
“Only The Brave Foundation seeks to give contribution to projects related to current issues that require urgent and targeted interventions, both internationally and locally,” comments Arianna Alessi, Director of the Foundation. “The WeFree project is aimed at young people, those who represent the future of our society. Through those shows we can intervene in a preventive way, hoping to bring the kids to think, not to feel alone, and to face conscious choices in daily choices that will affect their future. ”
“Our residents, who reach the end of their program, will tell their stories.to
students, often younger kids than them – explains Patrizia Russi, head of the San Patrignano prevention project – There is no way to teach these students how to live, but the desire to make them think and think about their everyday life, on the relationship they have with their family, friends, teachers, and let them understand how natural it is to have some uncertainty and fragility. It is crucial for us to have found such an important collaboration in order to be able to respond even more accurately to the many schools that contact us every day for prevention. ” The Foundation Only the Brave was created in 2008 with the mission to fight against social inequalities and contribute to the sustainable development of less-favored people and areas all over the world. The main criteria for selecting supported projects are innovation, sustainability and a direct social impact. To date, the foundation has invested in more than 170 social development projects, improving the lives of more than 180,000 people.