The project Una Bella Differenza – Percorsi di lettura per scoprire e valorizzare le diversità (A Good Difference – Reading courses to discover and value diversity) was developed in 2018 thanks to the contribution of the Waldensian Church’s 8×1000 fund, and is curated by the Documentation Center “Flavia Madaschi” in the context of the General Pact of Collaboration for the promotion and protection of the LGBTQIA+ community in Bologna 2022-26. It is co-financed by the European Union – National Metro Plus and Mid-size Southern Cities Program 2021-2027.

It began in the 2017-2018 academic year and is organized in partnership with the Equal Opportunities and Difference Safeguard Office and Library Sector of the Ministry of Bologna.

From preadolescence, teens go through a delicate and demanding period of change that involves their identity, experiences, body, and emotional field, and will shape their relationships with their peers, social roles, gender identity, acceptance of their own bodies, increased independence from their parents and adults in general, discovering their own values, and becoming aware of their own behaviors.

Models offered by society are still frequently influenced by stereotypes and prejudice, difficult to recognize as such and deconstruct: pre-established masculine and feminine roles are assumed as natural and unchanging, and only one type of family is socially recognized.

Education on difference is therefore necessary to prevent, recognize, and oppose ideologies characterized by exclusion. This project for pre-teens and teens has the goal of promoting respect and value for each kind of diversity, in order to prevent the formation of prejudice and the resulting phenomena of bullying and aggression toward their peers, as well as gender-based violence later on; it especially focuses on intersectionality and the multiple discriminations teens face in a society that rejects diversity and considers it as a threat to identity.