STEM education is getting higher on the Italian political agenda.

“The health emergency of these months has made it even clearer: promoting knowledge of STEM and financial subjects from an early age, particularly for young girls and students, is crucial. Inequalities start at an early age, let’s start again with education.”

With these words the Minister for Equal Opportunities and the Family Elena Bonetti announced on her Facebook page the launch of the call “STEM2020“, with which Italy invests 2 million euros from 1 July to 31 December 2020, to create courses for young girls and boys and students from 4 to 19 years of age.

The main objectives of the call are:

• to promote the empowerment of girls, stimulating them from an early age to become passionate about technical-scientific subjects, to study them, so that they can compete in the labour market of the future, taking up all the challenges;
• to overcome the stereotypes and prejudices, according to which the world of STEM subjects is exclusively for men;
• to stimulate the learning of these subjects also through innovative ways of learning the scientific method.

The project proposals are intended for schools of all levels, from pre-school to upper secondary school.

The educational areas are mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, coding, economics, robotics, animation, earth and environmental sciences, just to name a few, obviously chosen according to the age of the students and the type of school. 60% of the beneficiaries will have to be girls in order to guarantee an effective participation. Each project will be granted up to 15,000 euros and it is open to schools, universities and Third Sector organizations.

By SGI