Many families now experience situations of material deprivation, difficulties and isolation due to circumstances have changed such as employment downturns and decreases in the quality and quantity of consumption. These are the “new poverties.”

The Bologna City Government in its 2013 budget assigned 4.5 million Euros to the creation of an anti-crisis fund: one million for the housing problem, three million for projects aimed at creating employment, and half-a-million to the welfare sector for work inclusion.

With reference to the latter, the Don Paolo Serra Zanetti Institute for Social and Community Inclusion suggested an original project that is based on the re-appropriation of one’s own identity as citizens, and on the ability to provide supportive responses, both of which form part of Bologna’s history: the Zanardi Housesproject, inspired by an initiative to tackle poverty during the postwar of the 1st World War, devised by the then-mayor Francesco Zanardi.

This project does not merely offer opportunities to fight the economic crisis and create new employment inclusion. The project, in fact, uses the crisis as an occasion for change, as a chance to bring all social actors—public and private—together in endorsing a “solidarity pact” and in joining the common search for new inventive solutions to the crisis. The idea is based on a shared assumption of social responsibility in fighting unemployment and social exclusion, with an additional commitment on the part of the citizens community: reducing waste and promoting supportive and eco-sustainable living.

For more information, please check our Bank of Experiences.