FONDAZIONE MILAN WITH SCHOLAS AND THINK EQUAL

Scholas Occurrentes, Fondazione Milan and Think Equal together to encourage quality education, as well as fostering Global Citizenship through the promotion of values, working with young people and children, in public, private, formal and informal educational environments, through sports and education in life skills. The agreement was signed last June 28 at Scholas' headquarters in the Vatican City during an event attended by Paolo Scaroni, Chairman of AC Milan, Leslee Udwin, Founder and CEO of Think Equal, José María del Corral and Enrique Palmeyro, international executives of Scholas Occurrentes. In the afternoon, they presented Pope Francis with a personalised AC Milan shirt with his name and the number 29 which he autographed and that will be auctioned; the funds raised will be used to support the project Deportes con Valores.

AC Milan's Chairman Paolo Scaroni commented: "This is a very important agreement for Fondazione Milan because from now on we will be able to work with more than 500 thousand schools and educational networks that are part of Scholas' organization. Sport is an extraordinary learning environment for social inclusion and conveys positive values both on and off the field."

In this first phase, one of the projects that the three organizations will focus on is the creation and development of a joint global platform that will be used for educational programs in more than 40,000 schools worldwide, starting with Australia, Botswana, China, United States, Italy, Indonesia, Mozambique and Mexico. In this way, children from the age of 3 and young people from all over the world will experience a different and innovative educational model based on sports, technology, values empathy, gender equality and emotions. The first of these projects will be launched in September in Mozambique, on the occasion of the visit of His Holiness Pope Francis.

Scholas works to relaunch sports as a school of life, through the implementation of methodologies and programs whose foundations are the recovery of the fundamental values of the sporting activity, with the aim of offering children and young people, who live in extremely fragile contexts, a place where their can meet for their personal development involving them in their respective communities. 

Enrique Palmeyro, international executive of Scholas Occurrentes said: "When we established Scholas, Pope Francis requested the Organization to bring together education, sports and solidarity, and this agreement with Fondazione Milan and Think Equal is a great step towards the goal of fighting poverty and exclusion all over the world."

Leslee Udwin, Founder and CEO of Think Equal, added: "I am excited and optimistic for this broad and strong alliance, focused on children and young people around the world, to teach them to love and not to hate, to break the spiral of discrimination, selfishness and indifference. Our joint effort will teach our children from a very early age to experientially learn and live values, empathy, inclusion and positive outcomes in life. I'm really looking forward to joining our forces and energies to achieve this goal."