School-Community partnership is one of the strategic dimensions through which it's possible to qualify the educational processes and pursue one of the goals of the Agenda2030 for Sustainable Development, namely to promote an education that is qualified, inclusive and accessible for everyone, also through the involvement of local institutions and organizations.

In today’s complex era, it's crucial to strengthen the work of formal education contexts with initiatives promoted in the territory, which involve children, teenagers and families in the accomplishments of meaningful activities for the development of core competencies for active citizenship.

In the Italian educational landscape, the importance of extracurricular activities is also confirmed by the increasing focus on the so-called horizontal curriculum, aimed at integrating the educational offer connected to teaching-learning activities within the schools, with initiatives involving other institutions, such as cultural associations, libraries or museums.

One of the areas in which School-Community Synergy appears to be particularly active is reading promotion. Especially in relation to early childhood, this dimension seems to enable an active dialogue between families and educational institutions. Paths designed in this sense can therefore empower the relationship among formal, non-formal, and informal education actors, creating opportunities for personal, cultural, and social development.

The paper presents the main results of an exploratory study conducted in the context of the educational and cultural initiatives promoted by the Library of Villa San Sebastiano (Biblioteca di Villa), a small Italian village. The experience of this Library is particularly significant in the context of School-Community Synergy, as it has been actively collaborating with a pedagogist and nursery director to design reading promotion paths since 2019. These paths are aimed at promoting greater family awareness of the importance of reading from an early age; they are also meant to organize extra school initiatives to involve children and young people in activities to promote both their engagement in reading and their motivation to read.

The main objective of the study was to deepen the project experience of the Villa Library in order to identify organizational and methodological strategies useful for design reading promotion initiatives outside formal education environments. To do this, the research focused on the initiatives planned over the years, on their organizational structure and on the activities proposed, including readings in public spaces, and individual and peer tutoring workshops. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires, administered to the library’s director and staff, the pedagogical supervisor, and participating families.

The main outcomes confirm that local organizations can be a useful resource for enriching learning and cultural promotion opportunities in non-formal and informal education contexts, especially if they design and manage activities that are constant and consistent over time. The families involved appreciated the educational initiatives and the way they have been enriched over the years. Furthermore, the active and enthusiastic participation of children made it clear that the educational-didactic practices investigated are effective. It is possible to think of future exploitation and adaptation of such practices in further contexts.

Keywords: Educational design, Horizontal curriculum, Non-formal learning, Reading promotion, School-Community synergy.