The Higher Institute „Sandro Pertini“ of Afragola in the province of Naples, has always participated in numerous projects of various kinds, often in association with other schools in the area for the realization and dissemination of „good practices“ so that they can spread and materialize in the daily life of students and students making them active and constructive citizens in the future society.
Aware of the importance that in the VET sector covers the relationship between school and the world of work, the Institute has implemented in the last year, as part of the PON projects, a „two-year enhancement“ of PCTO providing activities to be designed and carried out within the supply chain of agriculture, crafts and local industry.
In particular, it has formed a partnership with a local company, the Cooperative „CANAPA CAMPANA“ of Caivano (NA), a company that deals with the cultivation of agricultural products and in particular of Sativa Hemp for industrial use, a noble and ancient plant that until the second half of the last century, has helped to make southern Italy the second largest country in the world for the quantity of hemp produced and for fiber quality.
The partnership with the above-mentioned Company aims to implement a series of activities related to objective 2 of Agenda 2030, in particular, those related to the concept of sustainable development and organic agriculture starting from:
- Sustainable and multifunctional agriculture that guarantees biodiversity, CO2 absorption from the atmosphere and valorization of production waste;
- Artisan and Industrial production realities that offer on the market controlled short-chain and biodegradable and/or environmentally friendly products.
The school project that our Institute intends to pursue concerns the principle that it is possible to create an interweaving between Agriculture, Research, Handicraft and Local Industry and models of sustainable economic development and promote it externally in the form of entrepreneurial activities or associations also in a network sustainable food production systems aiming simultaneously at the improvement of human living conditions and the creation of new employment opportunities to combat depopulation and abandonment of the territory.
Until the last closure of schools in Campania due to the worsening of the epidemiological emergency from Covid-19, the planned activities have unfortunately been reduced. However, there were alternating activities carried out at school and others carried out at the company.
The lessons in the class were of theoretical preparation on the hemp plant and its phytopathological aspects, to be realized later in short activities in the company „laboratory of experimentation“ that has provided students and students with an open-source know how limited, in this first phase to introduce them to new agricultural processes and new concepts of agricultural derivatives with particular attention to the food sector but also to sectors in which the processing of agricultural products and in particular hemp lend themselves for example fabric, cordage, paper.
