Rigenera Sud: the South as a welcoming campus for students from around the world

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed today in Rome, at the Ministry of the Interior, for the implementation of the initiative “Rigenera Sud – The South as a welcoming campus for students from around the world’, was signed today. Promoted by the Fondazione con il Sud, the initiative aims to facilitate the admission of international students to universities in southern Italy for the purposes of higher education, and to establish programmes for their reception, guidance and studies at the participating southern universities. The initiative also aims to strengthen collaboration between institutions and third-sector organisations, which will be responsible for facilitating the social integration of students into the communities where the three participating universities are located.

The three-year protocol, which will be launched on a pilot basis for 15 students from Bangladesh and Pakistan, involves, in addition to the Fondazione con il Sud, the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), which, together with the Fondazione con il Sud, will co-fund the initiative through Caritas Italiana, and the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAE), and of Universities and Research (MUR), the Universities of Calabria, Messina and Salerno.

Present at the signing were: the President of the Fondazione con il Sud, Stefano Consiglio; the Under-Secretary of the CEI, Don Gianluca Marchetti; the Minister for the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi; the Minister for Universities and Research, Anna Maria Bernini; and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani; the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities of Calabria and Salerno, respectively, Prof. Gianluigi Greco and Prof. Virgilio D’Antonio, and, representing the University of Messina, Prof. Giovanni Moschella, delegate of the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Giovanna Spatari.

Through this Memorandum of Understanding, the Fondazione con il Sud undertakes, in collaboration with Caritas Italiana, to co-fund the initiative “Rigenera Sud – The South as a welcoming campus for students from around the world’, by supporting a third-sector organisation in each of the three regions, in partnership with universities and other local stakeholders. The funding will support students through scholarships for up to 36 months. The third-sector organisations and the universities of Calabria, Messina and Salerno will carry out activities promoting reception, social and cultural inclusion, as well as career guidance and integration into the labour market, in coordination with the local business community, to encourage graduates to remain in the South of Italy and pursue skilled careers there.

Stefano Consiglio, president of the Fondazione con il Sud: “The Rigenera Sud initiative forms part of a broader strategy by the Fondazione con il Sud to promote demographic, social, cultural and economic regeneration in Southern Italy, which is our key strategic objective for this three-year period. By 2080, the population of the South risks falling by 8 million. We are not just losing numbers; we are losing graduates, energy, creativity and social ties. Faced with this scenario characterised by a falling birth rate, emigration and an ageing population, we have two paths: to resign ourselves to a decline that seems inevitable, or to join forces to change course. The agreement signed today with ministries, universities and the CEI moves precisely in this direction. Over the last twenty-two years, the South has lost 350,000 young graduates, 24,000 of them in 2024 alone. But the brain drain begins even before graduation. During the academic year, nearly 70,000 students from the South (around 13 per cent of the South’s total) enrolled at a university in the Centre-North. Mobility is a natural phenomenon; the problem is the one-way flow and the serious lack of appeal of the southern regions. Let us try to reverse this trend by forging alliances, and by embedding this regeneration effort within a more holistic vision of the development and future of the South and the country as a whole.”