Leather brings “passion” into young people’s lives
09/06/2017
Speaking in Igualada at an event to celebrate the ‘Leather Is My Job’ project, which focused on attracting young people into the industry, Mr Spinelli hailed the Tuscan project, called Amici Per La Pelle (Friends For Leather), as a particular success.
Since 2010, young people in schools around the Tuscan tanning cluster of Santa Croce have been taking part in the initiative, visiting local tanneries, learning about the processes involved in producing leather and then using the material to make their own leathergoods. As part of the 2017 exercise, Italy’s main tanning industry association, UNIC, invited 600 high-school students from Tuscany to travel to Milan to visit the Lineapelle exhibition to reinforce the work the teenagers had done.
“This initiative has found a way of transmitting real emotion and real passion to these young people,” Mr Spinelli said in Igualada. “Why do young people spend all their time on social media? It’s because they don’t have any real vision of their future. What we have found is that the leather industry can bring some real passion into their lives.”
He said it was “marvellous” for initiatives like this to have spread all over Europe as part of the ‘Leather Is My Job’ project.
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