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Welfare is a Community Project | Civic Europe
Social inclusion

Welfare is a Community Project

Creators

Who is behind this?

stefania peca

baumhaus

https://www.baumhaus.network/

Italy

Who is joining forces?

Arca di Noè Società Cooperativa Sociale

https://www.arcacoop.com/

Italy


Dipartimento di Sociologia e Diritto dell'Economia

https://sde.unibo.it/it/index.html

Italy


Idea

Idea pitch

In our suburb areas, in the est of Bologna, coexists an HUB for 200 asylum seeker and refugees, two dormitory for 120 homeless and some flat complexes for 500 families. How this people feel each other living the same area? How is it possible to engage all this different people to create a common sense of community? We believe that welfare is a community project and Bologna need to innovate its way to engage citizens with an intercultural approach.

Where will your project idea take place?

A suburb area of Bologna east with public services addressed to asylum seeker and homeless.

What is the specific societal challenge faced by this region?

In a suburb area at east of Bologna City, co-exist two structures for homeless with 120 places in the cold plan period and a reception centre for 200 asylum seekers, managed by 3 different cooperatives of the same consortium. Most part of locals that live in that area are aged and they live stranger people as enemies. They cannot understand the importance of having social safeguard able to intercept needs and advice people in difficulty to find their way. All of this produce a segmentation between people because of race, age, social and economic heritage and as consequence insecurity, discriminations, lack of engagement in the social life of neighborhood. Everything contribute to grow vulnerability perception of people living the area and no real social inclusion.

Who are you doing it for?

From specific interviews, we would like to engage different levels: locals, migrant people that arrived recently in Italy, homeless,social workers of the area, local politicians, others NGOs that work in the area.These will be possible thanks to our presence in the area and through an immersive process of observation. Project want mapping needs, resources of the area, challenges and attitude people living the area. Classifying problems into macro-areas will be possible to face it and to include in the process targets interesting to find real solution and to engage in that. To do it, network want to introduce a new social and local figure: welfare community manager. This figure is able to understand needs and create local network, real engagement of people and manage innovative solutions.

How do you plan to get there?

The project actions foresee:
-mapping of the realities active in the area and of the actions developed in the past;
-collection of needs of the area through individual interviews and meetings;
-facilitation of collective meetings for the definition of routes;
-identification of local welfare community managers and networking of available resources;
-awareness and knowledge activities among citizens, no profit organizations and institutions.
The project will be communicated and told in its process through public moments to share the results achieved, to encourage a path of continuous growth of territorial skills and additional needs that will emerge.

What are the expected results?

The most important aim of the project is to create a new figure of social worker (welfare community project) able to respond needs of specific area in collaboration with local non profit organisations in order to challenge new poverty ( social, economical, cultural ones). In one year, all the organisations involved in the process could actively collaborate with the institutional level and local politicians to innovate social services with more knowledge about the specific area and the social, economical and cultural context. In one year the project will reduce the level of discrimination and encourage individual and territorial empowerment processes, through the protagonism of those who live in the territories and the activation of positive synergies.

How does your idea strengthen active citizenship at a local and community level?

Project wants to innovate the methods for social inclusion by the direct engage of citizens, the understanding of their needs and the tempt to find a common solution. Multilevel process to develop complex projects in order to change the way of local welfare and to design a new way to support communities. The most important part of the project is to create a new understanding around the resources of people living the area and to support new ideas of communities. To do it we need to build spaces where relationships can happen and where people can be recognized as citizens. For that we are not proposing a solution, because we believe that from the process will grow up new ideas and activities by beneficiaries.

Why is this idea important to you?

Our idea is to improve a new approach to sustain welfare state and to evaluate the results of the process through some Key Performance Indicator defined with stakeholders and partners at the beginning of the project. The importance to hybridize teams with competencies that usually are not involved in social projects is an habit that we need to improve in our societies. In a economic, politic and social context in which resources are more less than in the past it is more important to save public fund but also to guarantee rights and respect for every persons living in the areas, it doesn't matter if local or not, resident or in transit. No profit organitations needs to help politician to translate the complexity of areas and to support them building togheter a new approach to problems.

€ 55000,-

Total budget

€ 50000,-

Funding requested from Civic Europe

Major expenses

Personnel Costs 40000 EUR
Dissemination Costs 20000 EUR

What do you need from the Civic Europe community?

Some good practice in other countries related suburb areas in other cities.

Team

Baumhaus

Idea created on May 27, 2020
Last edit on May 27, 2020

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