Social investment in youth: the challenge of a Southern Region in Italy

Social investment in youth: the challenge of a Southern Region in Italy This paper discusses ideas concerning Youth Policies of Puglia Region (Southern Italy) that, coherently with both Union Nations’ definition of youth as well as UN policies involving them, represent the social investment measures activated in the region in favour of young people with the objective to facilitate their transition, ever less linear and ever more diversified, to adulthood facilitating autonomy (full usability of rights) and interdependence (not only dependency) processes. Indeed, the social system into which the young people are inserted is open to a wider range of opportunities and choice possibilities which, enlarging risk margins and instability, favorite attitudes of disengagement and ever more restricted social relations than in the past. In such a scenario, much more complex due to the conjunctural economic crisis, the Puglia Region in last years introduced several and diversified trans-sectoral interventions of both 'positive activation' and 'offensive workfare' aimed, on the one hand, at reducing unemployment, on the other hand, at contributing to the development of young people as autonomous decision-makers (empowerment). Monitoring and periodic evaluations of the implemented actions have allowed a participatory programme design starting from “specific” needs and, in the logic of policy change, they have led the programmes with high social impact to become fully operational. A programme that has received important recognition at both national and international level and that is still operative is ‘Bollenti Spiriti’, a powerful tool of activation of young people considered as precious resources on which to leverage for Regional social, economic and cultural change.