Mediobanca Group Sport Camp
Mediobanca Group Sport Camp: sports camp opens for prisoners at the Cesare Beccaria Institute for Young Offenders in Milan
A project to promote social inclusion and help young offenders re-entering society through sport
The Mediobanca Group has today unveiled a new social project with the sponsorship of the Milan municipality: the Mediobanca Group Sport Camp, which from 26 June will see young prisoners at the “Cesare Beccaria” Institute for Young Offenders in Milan take part in a sports camp. The project’s main objective is to use sport as a tangible way to promote social integration and so facilitate the young offenders’ re-entry to society once they have completed their punishment.
The Camp has been organized by the Mediobanca Group in conjunction with Diego Dominguez and his staff, who in the week from 26 to 30 June will share in a sporting experience with the prisoners, promoting competition, a healthy lifestyle and the values of fair play.
“We have decided to promote this initiative”, said Giovanna Giusti del Giardino, Mediobanca’s Group Sustainability Manager, “because we believe that the support which our Group must give to the community can use projects to promote sport as a vehicle for social inclusion. The enthusiasm and experience of Diego Dominguez and his staff, who we’ve been working with for some time now, are extremely valuable. For these reasons we want to offer the young people at the Istituto Beccaria an opportunity to get involved in some team sports to help them experience some positive values, in the hope these will help them at the end of their time in the institution”.
Olimpia Monda, who is the Director of the “Cesare Beccaria” Institute for Young Offenders, said: “This will be a challenging week for us, because it will force a rigid system (which is what a total institution such as a prison for young offenders is) to be very flexible. This sports camp will become one of the instruments used by the Institute in its goal which ultimately is the reintegration of these young people: sport can be a vehicle for messages about respecting the rules and your opponent, about how to compete healthily, about trying out different experiences compared to the ones most of these young people normally had. I hope it will be a unique experience for our young people given their lives so far. I also hope that the sports staff and the staff of the Institute will work well together, and that an “entertaining” week is had by all. I would like to thank Mediobanca for giving us this opportunity.
The camp will involve around forty young people aged from 16 to 21 who will try out a variety of different team sports, including rugby, football, swimming and basketball, with the “downtime” which is typical of prison life kept to a minimum, and as much time as possible spent playing and enjoying sport.
A kind of internal Olympic tournament will be organized, with four teams made up of ten young people plus one instructor from the staff, to compete with each other at rugby, football, basketball, and swimming relay races. A league table will be published at the end of each day, and the winning team will be announced at the end of the week.
Apart from Diego and his staff, each day the young people will also have a chance to meet a special guest, a famous sports personality from the present or past, who will spend the day with them.
Apart from actually playing sport, there will also be sessions devoted to explaining the values and spirit of rugby and sport in general, the importance of diet and a healthy lifestyle
During the week some of the athletes from the CUS Milan team will be working alongside Diego’s staff to organize the activities.
Milan, 22 June 2017
