SALESIANI PER IL SOCIALE-
Leading the way. Together
Background
Salesiani per il Sociale APS coordinates one of Italy’s largest Servizio Civile Universale (Universal Civil Service) programmes every year: over 1,000 placements across projects in Italy and abroad, in youth centres, schools, oratories and family homes. The call is open, the spots are there. The challenge is reaching those who don’t yet know they want to take part.
Concept
The right road to travel, when the destination isn’t clear yet.
The creative challenge
Young people between 18 and 28 are living through a transitional phase where the future feels uncertain and undefined. They don’t know where they’re going, but they feel the urge to move, to take a first step that means something. The challenge was to meet this real condition without motivational rhetoric, normalising doubt rather than ignoring it. The Civil Service couldn’t be presented as a definitive answer, but as a space to find direction along the way: a means of discovering one’s own path through experience and growth.
Execution
The road becomes both visual and narrative metaphor. A strong graphic mark overlays photographs of a subject caught in an urban setting, ready to leave. A black-and-white treatment gives the communication an institutional weight, while the colorful gradient makes the concept of orientation concrete and immediate.
Copy and creative direction emerged from a collaborative process with the Salesiani per il Sociale team: a dialogue built on listening and exchange, to identify the values the organisation holds most deeply and translate them into language that speaks directly to the target audience. The result is a tone that is simple and direct, free of rhetorical pressure: it acknowledges the disorientation young people in transition feel, proposes an active response, and frames the time of Civil Service not as passive waiting, but as experience, relationship and discovery.
