The fourth meeting of the RESPONDET (Regional Social Economy Policies for sustainable community-Driven Environmental Transition) project, hosted in Turin on Jan. 24 and 25 by Città di Torino e Camera di Commercio di Torino, with Turin Social Impact, which welcomed European delegations from Belgium, Spain and Poland, concludes today.

The project aims to promote local and regional development in order to strengthen the social economy, making common management of resources the main element of social sustainability in the Green transition process, with a focus on circular economy and energy transition issues.

The theme of the fourth mission, “new models of cooperation and governance”, was explored by all project partners through intensive knowledge transfer work, which also included several study visits to the most significant impact economy places in the city, including Casa del Quartiere San Salvario, Via Baltea, Beeozanam, Open Incet, Centro Cultura Ludica “Walter Ferrarotti,” Casa nel Parco – Casa del Quartiere Mirafiori Sud.

In addition, some partners of Torino Social Impact were actively involved in the meeting through a structured networking moment with European stakeholders, offering them a space to compare, stimulate and reflect on social economy practices at the international level, in order to foster the growth of these initiatives in our territory.

Respondet’s partners are:

Generalitat of Catalonia. Business and Labor Department. Catalonia Region (ES) (lead partner), The Confederation of Cooperatives of Catalonia (ES), The European Network of Cities and Regions for the Social Economy (REVES aisbl), Service Public de Wallonie Economie, Emploi, Recherche – Direction de l’économie sociale (BE), Concertation des organisations représentatives de l’économie sociale (ConcertE S) (BE), Malopolska Voivodship/The Regional Centre for Social Policy in Cracow (ROPS) (PL), Città di Torino e Camera di Commercio di Torino.

Read more:

Chamber of Commerce and City of Turin win RESPONDET European Project for Torino Social Impact

First meeting of RESPONDET | Torino Social Impact project partners

The event takes place in the form of a face-to-face meeting with industry stakeholders and entrepreneurs to learn about projects and technologies applied to the creative industry followed by in-depth one-to-one meetings.

B2B Meeting

At the end of the conference all participants will be able to request B2B meetings to learn more about Invitalia’s funding opportunities or get in touch with companies and stakeholders in the sector and activate useful synergies, networking and opportunities for future collaboration.

Participation is free of charge. Agenda and registration on Eventbrite.

Turin, the consortium leader, on Monday 9 January held the first meeting of SocialTech4EU, the project co-funded by the European Union, in the framework of the Joint Cluster Initiatives (EUROCLUSTERS) for Europe’s recovery, which aims to strengthen the resilience, innovation capacity, competitiveness and sustainability of social economy ecosystems, start-ups and SMEs, with a special focus on technology companies.

The meeting defined the modalities by which support will be provided in the coming months to social start-ups that will be selected through a special call for proposals. Grants, vouchers and professional services will be provided.

The consortium is formed by: Torino Social Impact represented by Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (consortium leader, Italy), Alaturi de Voi Romania Foundation (ADV Romania), Coompanion Örebro (Sweden), Silicon Vilstal (Germany), Asociacion investigacion, desarollo e innovacion en Aragon IDIA (Spain), European network of social integration enterprises ENSIE (Belgium/EU).

On 25 November 2022, the focus group ‘Ageing in Place’ proposed by the Turin-based start-up SensoArgento was held at the Circolo del Design in Turin. Led by industrial designer Andrea Strippoli and digital entrepreneur Marcello Chiesa, representatives of the social assistance ecosystem in the Turin area took part in a workshop with the aim of analysing the main issues related to elderly care and identifying possible actions to be implemented to improve the current care offer using digital tools.

There are about 14 million people over the age of 65 living in Italy, many of whom enjoy good health conditions and a good level of autonomy: this age group is becoming increasingly significant due to its growth, which is not compensated by a corresponding increase in the number of under-15s, who have instead decreased by 400,00 since 2010. The 2017 Auser research ‘Domiciliarity and Residential Care’ shows that more and more people prefer to receive care at home rather than turn to facilities. This gave rise to the idea of analysing the current situation in which families live and understanding which problems they have to face, which are solved and which still need to be solved or at least mitigated; most of the services offered in the elderly care landscape are outdated, do not make sufficient use of digital and innovative tools and rely entirely on the direct help of caregivers. Thus, a strong imbalance has arisen between the demand for care by the elderly population, the ability of families to respond on their own, and the supply of care services, generating strong imbalances and situations of severe disadvantage for some of the weaker segments of the population.

Using the classic Design Thinking method of convergence and divergence, the focus group participants first set out everything that came to their minds when talking about the care of an elderly person and then filtered and grouped the problems into 2 macro-areas:

• Emergencies
  Routine problems

Subsequent analysis by the SensoArgento team revealed a further 5 sub-categories into which the issues emerged can be divided (for the full analysis download the attached report):

1. Problems related to physical decay
2. Problems related to mental decay
3. Problems of psychological nature
4. Problems related to maintaining routine and personal well-being
5. Problems of a social nature

Based on the problems collected, possible solutions were generated. Some of these are already present in some form in the area while some are not yet present in the current offer, e.g. the use of video games to alleviate the sense of loneliness in a similar way to some youth groups was proposed, together with the use of augmented reality to make the person relive his or her old home.

Innovative solutions such as these are fertile ground for teams of innovators and disruptors who can leverage their ability to innovate in the technological and social fields. Exploiting the potential of new technologies to solve social problems in order to give added value to the elderly is the goal of SensoArgento, a start-up that was born in Fondazione CRT’s Talenti per l’Impresa project and now seeks to collaborate with local authorities to improve its non-invasive monitoring system.

For more information, visit sensoargento.it or contact marcellochiesa@sensoargento.it.

Here you can download the report