FREE TO… LIVE
“The achievement of gender equality passes through the defeat of the subculture of men’s violence against women, but also through the elimination of barriers and obstacles that make women weaker due to wage inferiority or economic dependence or repeated discrimination that harms and hinders women’s working, social and professional growth”.
Federico Cafiero de Raho
Libere di vivere (Free to live) is an educational project, a travelling exhibition and a docufilm that Global Thinking Foundation is taking to schools throughout Italy. The aim is to make students aware of two closely related issues: financial literacy and gender equality.
The tool that has been used to capture the attention of young people, and which has proved successful in recent years, is the comic strip.
The project Libere di vivere, versatile and with free material, lends itself effectively both to the Civic Education curriculum and as a PCTO.
School orders
The school orders involved in the Libere di vivere project are the first and second grade secondary schools.
For the three-year school year, a long course of 30 hours is proposed, with workshop activities and a final restitution meeting with a commentary on the work carried out. Shorter meetings can also be formulated.
The core of the project involves viewing the images from the exhibition, which are divided into three thematic areas:
- The comic-strip heroines: through the iconographic analysis of the comic-strip heroines, considerations are triggered on the evolution of the struggle for women’s rights to understand why it is only now that we can finally talk about economic violence.
- The images of economic violence: these images, commissioned by the Foundation from artists of the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, are used to inspire the boys and girls and make them reflect on the dynamics of economic violence to teach them to identify which strategies to activate to combat it.
- The graphic novel “The Rule of Emptiness“. With the analysis of this graphic novel, produced exclusively by the Global Thinking Foundation, we will bring to the attention of boys and girls the minimum necessary information they should master to become adults aware of the importance of money management.
Following this, the in-depth study changes according to the order of School.
In secondary school, the focus is on the graphic and historical aspects of the struggle for women’s rights.
In secondary School, on the other hand, there are different levels of in-depth study with lessons on financial literacy, the conscious use of money and the importance of economic independence.
By agreement with the Foundation, bringing the exhibition to the school premises and organising a training course for teachers and students is possible.
In Secondary School, we also recommend watching the 75-minute Docufilm of the same name, which bears the testimony of some victims of economic violence. This is always followed by a debate in the presence of Foundation staff and, when possible, the filmmaker.
The teachers’ handbook
To make the project accessible to all teachers, a handbook for teachers has also been written and published by DeAgostini for UTET, which illustrates all the materials and how to use them in the classroom, complete with fact sheets, didactic proposals to be carried out both in class and at home, film fact sheets, explanations on how to set up lessons in the course by school order and also evaluation sheets. Please refer to the book sheet for more details.
Accompanying the project is a collection of graphic novels featuring extraordinary women who, in different historical periods, have contributed to narrowing the gender gap. These novellas, which can be freely consulted on the website, are translated into English and French for use by international students as well as for CLIL lessons.
The project has been accepted on the Ministry of Education and Merit’s School Regeneration platform.
More information can be found on the project website.