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On November 10, thousands of high school and university students filled the cloister, the rooms and the exhibition area of the former Augustinian convent in Lecce. It was the first day of the second stage of the Mondadori Academy Forum Orienta, after the start in Palermo. Between one meeting and another, the students wandered around the stands of universities, academies and partners, to get a concrete idea of what to study and where.
At the center of the morning was the opening conference, “Lecce, do you care?”: Emiliano Novelli, CEO of UniversityBox (Mondadori’s partner in the initiative), presented the data from “Lecce we want”, the observatory that asked students how they experience the city. 81% of those who responded like Lecce, more than the Italian average. Yet 58% think of leaving after studying, and work gets the lowest rating, 46 out of 100. Pamela Carati of Mondadori Media and the school directors Antonella Cazzato (Technical Institute Deledda) and Virginia Panzera (Technical Institute De Pace) also spoke. Then Emanuela Ingusci, delegate for Orientation of the University of Salento, Valentino Nicolì, president of Confindustria Lecce, and the mayor Adriana Poli Bortone responded to the students from the point of view of the university, businesses and the Municipality.
In the other rooms the common thread was the work to come. Michele De Luca, of Project School, showed that the green transition is also a factory of new professions, some still to be invented. Antonio Dell’Atti explained how Erasmus+ can lead a boy from Salento to study and work across half of Europe. Alberto Paglialunga, who founded the Deghi e-commerce in Puglia, has demonstrated with his story that a successful business can be created even far from Milan. Andrea Coppola, from IE University, transformed the room into a laboratory with the “Jobs of the Future” workshop, on professions that still don’t have a name. And those who dream of a future in design, fashion, music or entertainment have met the schools that prepare them for those professions: RUFA, SPD, Ferrari Fashion School, Saint Louis Music College and CAST.
At the end of the first day, physicist Silvio Franz talked about the origins of artificial intelligence and the long journey between disciplines that led to the 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics for Hopfield and Hinton. The meeting that opened the morning was also dedicated to AI: Enrico Ciavolino presented UniSalento’s Data Science paths.
The Forum closes today, November 11th. Antonio Dell’Atti returns to the stage with his story of departure and return to the South, and Invitalia explains how to transform an idea into a business with Resto al Sud 2.0. Francesca Folda, journalist and strategic consultant for social impact, leads young people aged between 17 and 25 in an interactive session entitled “What possible futures?”. We don’t talk about which faculty to choose: we start from what we want to become.
The Forum was sponsored by the Municipality of Lecce and Confindustria Lecce.
Institutional partners of the initiative are the Minister for Sport and Youth, which promotes the National Youth Card, and Invitalia, which presents Resto al Sud 2.0, the measure dedicated to young people who want to start an entrepreneurial activity in the South. Mondadori Academy Forum Orienta Lecce also had the moral patronage of the Business and Skills Foundation for Made in Italy.
Other partners include Banca Ifis, as part of the activities of Kaleidos, the institute’s social impact lab, and APT Gorizia, which presents new technologies and professions linked to the ecological transition, with an in-depth look at the use of hydrogen for zero-emission buses.
The next stop is in Taranto (1-2 December). In 2027 the Forum will arrive in Catania, Bari and Brindisi.
