Pistoia Social Business City
Pistoia was acknowledged as a Social Business City in 2012. The involvement of students, entrepreneurs, citizens and public administration has been fundamental in spreading the culture of social business at local level. This result would not have been achieved without the collaboration and constant support of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia and the Fondazione Un Raggio di Luce.
The activities of the Social Business City programme have been and are still being developed and implemented by the Yunus Social Business Centre University of Florence. In recent years, the Pistoia model has also been replicated abroad, in particular in Barcelona, thanks to the support of local partners and Tandem Social, and in Taoyuan (Taiwan) which is currently a Social Business City candidate.
Since 2012, a large part of the territory of Pistoia has been involved in the activities of the PSBC programme. In the first years, two editions of the Social Business Day were realised, a day that aimed to raise awareness of social business and to deepen entrepreneurship and social innovation through conferences and events.
Subsequently, in order to get a clearer idea of the Third Sector in Pistoia and the evolution of social business within it, two consecutive mappings were carried out. The first one involved more than 200 organisations, while the second one focused on the 56 organisations that declared themselves social enterprises according to law 155/2006.
The other activities in the area are the high school students program and the training for aspring social entrepreneurs: Youth & Social Business and Grow Your Business!