The time has finally come: the first Bocconi Inclusion Week will be held from November 10th – 17th!
What is it about?
Bocconi Inclusion Week wants to be a week dedicated to seminars and activities aimed at making the Bocconi environment increasingly inclusive.
The seminars, held by specialists from all over the world, will deal in particular with topics such as disability, gender equality, the LGBTQ+ community, ethnic minorities, mental health and neurodiversity.
On the other hand, activities will allow participants to experience firsthand the difficulties, from which skills are developed, faced every day by disabled people. In the specific case of physical disabilities, participants will be invited to notice how a small architectural barrier can deny the access to an entire building and therefore meaning the exclusion from doing certain activities. Furthermore, they will underline the steps forward that Bocconi University has made in recent years towards the creation of a fully accessible campus equipped with all the necessary services to assist disabled people during their university life.
That’s not all! Among the many activities, you can choose to try playing a Paralympic sport, to take part in a meditation meeting or to have a meeting with a Bocconi counselor.
To attend the seminars and to actively participate in the experiential activities, we recommend to visite the official website of Bocconi University, in order to register your presence, if requested.
Why did we organize a week dedicated to inclusion?
We often hear about diversity, but the concept it represents is rarely valued. Each of us has characteristics that are obviously different from those of people around us. In the same way, disabilities, for example, can be considered as a distinctive trait, a peculiarity without which a person would not be the same. However, how can we ensure that diversity becomes normal for society? By letting them know about it! Every disease that is not known, ignored, appears anomalous and strange to everyone’s eyes. However, when its behaviour and its characteristics are shown and explained, it becomes part of the knowledge of every individual.
It is therefore important on the one hand to spread the information we have on this topic as much as possible so that people feel familiar with it and not consider it as a taboo, on the other hand to bring out the critical issues that disabilities encounter in order to work every day to make the world accessible to everyone.
To do this, we need the contribute of each of us: those who experience disability firsthand are right to set as their main objective that of making their condition known, in all its aspects, to the people who are part of their life, in order to create relationships characterized by with no fear and shame; at the same time, it’s time for society to no longer hide from diversity, but, instead, to discover it.
This discussion must be extended, as previously said, to any characteristic of each individual. Diversity in itself has always been disturbing, but it is useless and foolish to try to hide it, as it represents us. It is, paradoxically, something that makes us all equal.
Let’s bring out our courage and show who we really are!
by Maddalena Puddu