The agreement between the Municipality of Milan and Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare, with Durex Italia, was announced today, with an event held at Palazzo Marino, which aims to guarantee increasingly widespread access to emotional and sexual education interventions for young students Milanese. The agreement, which will also concern the creation of the new edition of the “Youth and Sexuality” Observatory in the Milan area, makes the collaboration between the parties official within the “A Luci Accese” project, and will lead Milan to be among the first cities in Italy to provide, from the 2024/2025 school year, a proposal for emotional and sexual education courses in high schools.
”This is an initiative in which we believe a lot. We thank Reckitt and Durex, who wanted to make their experience and knowledge available to the city and community of Milan”, declared Martina Riva, Councilor for Sport, Tourism and Youth Policies of the Municipality of Milan. ”I am particularly proud of this collaboration, which will see us directly involved in the high schools that will join, from today and throughout the next school year. I believe that the promotion of a correct culture of affectivity and sexuality among young people today represents a theme that a pragmatic, concrete and in step with the times administration can no longer afford to ignore. Furthermore, with this initiative, we are taking a significant step towards the standards already expected at European and international level on the subject”, concluded Riva.
In this regard, as reported by UNESCO Report-Gem 20231, Italy is among the only six European nations that currently do not have formal and compulsory programs of emotional and sexual education in schools, together with Bulgaria, Cyprus, Lithuania , Poland and Romania. A lack, this, which combined with the evidence that emerged in the annual Durex “Youth and Sexuality” Observatory, created in collaboration with Skuola.net, demonstrates the lack of awareness of young people’s choices in this area and makes the adoption of interventions aimed at filling this gap.
Specifically, the Observatory – among the main, broadest and most in-depth sources on the subject in Italy – has been conducted for over six years at a national level on a sample of approximately 15,000 young people between 11 and 24 years old and provides a very clear snapshot of to the requests, needs and behaviors of young Italians. Furthermore, from this year, Durex has deepened the analysis, also providing for an extraction of the data referring to the city of Milan, with the aim of evaluating any differences compared to the national average.
However, the data have shown that in Milan and its province a situation emerges that is very similar to the national panorama, with an early and very often unaware approach to sexuality and affectivity, based on knowledge that is sometimes incorrect and information that is not always clear, which however determines behaviors that risk to themselves and others.
Among the most significant numbers emerges that 1 in 10 young Milanese people (9.5%) have their first sexual intercourse before turning 13, 6 in 10 (56.2%) do not always use a condom and, above all, that almost all of them (95.1%) would like emotional and sexual education as a school subject.
”The partnership with the Municipality of Milan is a crucial and significant step forward in Durex’s mission to promote free, protected and conscious sexuality and in spreading the importance of emotional and sexual education among young people” declared Paolo Zotti , CEO of Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare (Italy) Spa, which markets the Durex brand in Italy. ”The data that emerge from our annual observation are at the same time alarming and enlightening and precisely for this reason we are proud that the Municipality of Milan with the Department of Youth Policies has chosen to collaborate directly with us with the aim of offering young people Milanese people have the tools, knowledge and resources necessary to deal with their sexuality in a responsible and conscious way” concludes Zotti.
The “A Luci Accese” program, active in Milan high schools since October 2023, represented a first and concrete step forward in Italy on the topic of introducing emotional and sexual education in schools and was born with the multiple objective to encourage emotional education that can lay the foundations for “healthy” relationships, based on values such as respect and consent, as well as providing clear and correct information regarding the sphere of affectivity and sexuality, the impact of choices in sexual health field.
”We hope that this can only be a first step of inspiration for other local and national entities to undertake a path of education on sexuality and affectivity aimed at younger people” declared Laura Savarese, Director of Regulatory Affairs and Relations External from Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare (Italy) Spa, ”The Durex team, as a leading brand in the sexual well-being category, has for years been committed to listening to young people and this has allowed us to acquire a better understanding of the discomfort that often live and in-depth expertise on the priority areas of intervention for educational and social and health prevention programmes. Thanks to this and to a network of experts in the sector, psychologists, sexologists, we can today develop and propose educational courses aimed at schools, with an innovative approach based on small dialogue groups that facilitate a transparent discussion, educational and information materials, help desks listening and inclusive and non-judgmental spaces” continued Savarese. ”In these years of commitment in this area, we have chosen not to ignore the requests coming from girls and boys from all over Italy, to dialogue with them and to make our know-how available to all institutional, political and social forces and medical-scientific ones to act together directly and concretely” concluded Savarese.
The initiative, organized in collaboration with Ala Milano Onlus, is therefore today renewed and expanded, with even more force, with the aim of introducing emotional and sexual education in schools throughout the territory and of involving more and more young people, aligning Milan with the rest of Europe and thus making it an example and driving force for the rest of the country.
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