Virginia, Sara and Sasha have travelled to Naples to discover the city’s social businesses.
The winners of the second prize of the Youth & Social Business competition set off to discover the Italian social enterprises present in the center of Naples. Accompanied by researchers from the Yunus Social Business Center of the University of Florence, the three young students discovered the different ways of doing social business through stimulating encounters with:
Nuovo Teatro Sanità, a theatre born in 2013 in the heart of Naples in the Rione Sanità, an area full of contrasts. The district is characterized on the one hand by a strong socio-economic discomfort linked to high school dropout and unemployment, on the other by a strong ferment of rebirth and social and cultural redemption, as it is home to a growing number of lively Third Sector realities. Over the past year, more than 60 children have attended courses taught by professionals in the Nuovo Teatro Sanità, courses that they have attended for free. The aim of the project is to form a theatrical company that brings together professional technical skills.
The Nuovo Teatro Sanità has thus become a social and cultural garrison in a neighborhood where school dropout and youth unemployment are often fertile ground for the presence and recruitment of criminal organizations.
FOQUS Fondazione Quartieri Spagnoli onlus, the foundation has regenerated a place – empty and devoid of functions and future – to transform it into a productive, creative, caring and training community of the person, who participates to the transformation of the Spanish Quarters.
FOQUS takes place in one of the most emblematic and fragile areas of the metropolitan city; it experiments new models of community welfare and promotes processes to social mobility, development, transformation.
Dialogue Place, is an incubator of multicultural social enterprises and a coworking space managed by the Cooperative Project Ahead with national and international partners. It is located in the Spanish Quarters, its mission is to promote integration through the creation of social enterprises run by Neapolitans and migrants. To do this, member carry out social enterprise competitions, events and offer an incubation program that follows the aspiring entrepreneurs from the conception phase of the social business to the launch on the company market.
Catacaboms of Naples are managed by the Social Cooperative La Paranza, that was born in the Rione Sanità where it works to change things. Members of La Paranza use and share all their knowledge and their will to support new productive activities, to restore hope in younger generations.
On their last day, the three they made a guided visit of the Rione Sanità to understand better the challenges that the neigborhood faces. They also went to visit the Cimitero delle Fontanelle, a former ossuary that extends over more than 3000 square meters and contains the remains of an unknown number of people. The cemetery is known because the ritual of the “pezzentelle souls” that took place there: inhabitants of the city used to adopt a specific skull of an abandoned soul and were devoted to it in exchange of supernatural protection.
Every year since 2012, the Youth and Social Business project is taking place in Pistoia, the School-Work Alternation program that brings the social enterprise among the youngest thanks to the support of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia and Pescia and the Fondazione a Raggio of Luce Onlus.
For the 2018/2019 school year, 8 classes from 3 institutions in the Pistoia area were involved: Technical-State Institute Marchi-Forti, IPSSCS Luigi Einaudi, Istituto ITCS Pacini. The students followed a simulation path of social enterprise through frontal lessons and workshops that led them to develop their own idea of social business that would pay particular attention to economic and financial sustainability and social impact.
Students are accompanied to the final competition by a consultancy service that helps them in developing their business idea, their entrepreneurial skills, team work and multiple design skills useful on the labour market. The three best projects, selected from 10 finalists, receive an award. The top finishers went to Paris while third place winners will receive a € 100 voucher each for the purchase of books.
Pure Water
Discover here the project that on the second prize of the Youth and Social Business Competition
