The “Ada Bolchini Dell’Acqua” Institute in Milan is the latest acquisition of the Pio Istituto Pei Figli della Provvidenza thanks to the commonality of ideas and style of the two educational realities.
Since 1953 some families and ladies of the Milanese petty bourgeoisie and aristocracy, including Ada Bolchini Dell’Acqua, were committed to the benefit of mothers and their newborns. In 1956 they opened a Maternal House, to welcome about thirty mothers with children from 0 to 3 years. The headquarters, also built thanks to the contribution of the well-known architect Marco Zanuso and the artist Lucio Fontana (the interior of the chapel and the ceiling, the famous Via Crucis rosa – now kept at the Diocesan Museum of Milan – and the four cherubs on the sides of the altar), immediately hosts mothers and children at risk of marginalization.
In 1961 also the School for paediatric nurses was born to prepare specialized personnel capable of assisting children.
In the seventies the Lorenteggio-Inganni district grew and, to meet the new requirements, the building was enlarged and in 1971 it opened a Nursery for the children of external families. The Maternal House was increasingly focusing on educational activities and in 1984 it also opened the Scuola Materna (today Kindergarten), distinguished as an officially recognised school in 2001.
A constant presence over time was that of the Sisters of the Order of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who would remain until 2010, when the Pio Istituto Pei Figli Della Provvidenza assumed the building and all the school activities managed until that moment by the Ada Bolchini Dell’Acqua Foundation.
A constant presence over time was that of the Sisters of the Order of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who would remain until 2010, when the Pio Istituto Pei Figli Della Provvidenza assumed the building and all the school activities managed until that moment by the Ada Bolchini Dell’Acqua Foundation.
In 2011 the new Toddlers School section opened for children aged 24 to 36 months, while the reception of mothers and children ended in 2012. The School for paediatric nurses, on the other hand, closed its doors in 2005.
From the 2010/2011 school year, the building and school activities were sold to the Pio Istituto Pei Figli della Provvidenza, a moral body founded in Milan in 1885 by the priest and educator Don Carlo San Martino, whose work was aimed at welcoming young people in difficulty and to create for them a context of positive relationships that would contribute to the realization of God’s love for each of us.
From the original programme of Don Carlo San Martino springs the fundamental objective of the formative activity, common to all the subjects operating in the School: to contribute to the education of boys and girls, that is to respect their rights and the integral formation of the person, through the mediation of culture, expressed in an educative context inspired by all the values of the Catholic Christian faith.
The Nursery welcomes children who have completed the third month of life up to one year of age in the section of the Lactating Bears, and children from one year to two years of age in the Middle Bears section.
The two sections of the Toddlers School, Ladybirds and Butterflies, welcome the children in spaces and classrooms dedicated to them and structured in order to promote concrete experiences and consolidate the skills already acquired.
The Kindergarten fosters the maturation of personal identity, the conquest of autonomy as an opening to the relationship with others and the discovery, the development of the child’s skills.
