Marco Rossi-Doria

or years, a torn magazine clipping about Marco Rossi-Doria hung around in my Rome filing drawer getting increasingly ragged. It showed a grainy picture of a tall bespectacled man in the rain on a cobbled lane in Naples. It was headlined “maestro di strada” (the streets teacher) and recounted how Rossi-Doria was taking instruction far beyond the classroom. In the city that tops the Italian League table for teenage truancy, he was meeting problem youngsters on their own turf, in Naples’ notorious Spanish Quarter.

When I finally meet Rossi-Doria — seven years later — Naples turns on a dazzlingly limpid spring day. Despite this, the Spanish Quarter still feels like hostile territory. Crumbling 15th-century palazzi, television antennas and lines of washing decorate the skyline and scaffolding still props up buildings from the 1980 earthquake.

Rossi-Doria is 50, with a drooping mustache and expressively arching eyebrows.

As we head towards the headquarters of the organization he founded, Project Chance, he explains in perfect transatlantic English what it has achieved so far.

So far, 440 truants in Naples have been given a second chance to pick up broken school careers, some marred by violence, drugs and parental abuse, and complete their compulsory schooling. Their success rate in the middle-school graduation exam (terza media) is 89 percent.

Today is the first formal assessment for this year’s students. Martina, a chubby fifteen-year-old with bitten nails and dark, distrustful eyes, is questioned amicably about geography, Italian and history. When she panics or can’t express herself, her tutor, seated alongside, steps in to encourage her. Asked what she’s seeking from Project Chance, Martina gazes around the airy, colorful classroom and pauses. “I want to learn how to calm down,” she says.

The first day at Project Chance she and another girl had a hair-pulling, face-scratching punch-up. Martina is from a “normal” family; father employed, parents together, no problems of drugs or abuse in the home. Yet despite this she was clearly a failure within the school system — which she could not relate to — and simply stopped going in the second year of middle school. Many of her classmates have a father or brother in jail, unemployment, drugs and crime are rife, and neighborhood life is still shaped by the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia.

“Some of these kids have a vast baggage of skills that neither they nor the school system are able to capitalize on. I want to help bridge the gap between street-smart and school-smart,” says Rossi-Doria, who does not like to be interviewed nor speak at length about himself or his accomplishments.

Project Chance evolved from Rossi-Doria’s experience as a “maestro di strada,” which he began in 1999. He organized homework sessions, artistic workshops, followed difficult children in their normal schooling, spoke with the families and simply hung out with the kids themselves.

Rossi-Doria says his team has no pedagogical miracle cures, just a few essential rules, including rigor and consistency, and the willingness to reach out to these teenagers’ universe and draw them in. As they prepare for lunch, some of the students give their views.

“Marco is not like teachers in normal schools. He helps you understand things and he listens,” says Paolo, sporting a Bob Marley T-shirt and spiky, dyed blond hair. “I always thought that school was boring, it didn’t have anything to do with my life. Here it’s different,” chimes in Raffaelle.

Communal meals are an essential part of the program. Rituals are also important in recognizing commitment and achievement. When the students come on board, they make a public pledge, and they receive symbolic “pocket money” if they attend class regularly.

“Unless the students have a minimum of will to get the most basic academic qualification there’s no point letting them on the project,” says Rossi-Doria. “What we can do is support them when it gets tough, even in banal things like having the tutor go to their homes and ensure they are up and dressed and make it to school.”

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