IL BULLONE is a non-profit organization dedicated to adolescents and young adults (patients) with serious chronic diseases – such as cancer, HIV, eating disorders but also rare diseases. They are aged between 18 and 30.
Bullone means bolt in English, which represents for us the strength that keep us together.
We are supported by many volunteers, companies, students and journalists and we collaborate/cooperate/work with different hospitals in the Lombardy region (Milan and hinterland). We help our young adults to go beyond their illness developing their professional and relational skills with different projects (real working experiences) and activities in collaboration with companies, other foundations and no profit organizations, schools and inspirational community members.
We join enterprises like Vibram to develop co-branding projects as well as communication projects (campaigns, socials, videos, magazines etc). We also hold training and team building programs tailored for different companies’ needs. Next week we will run one here with Vibram designers.
Il Bullone is also a monthly newspaper written by young adults and volunteers with the help of some professional journalists from Italy’s major newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera. Il Bullone wants to increase awareness on important themes of our society and our world such as health, culture, economics and sustainability and brings inspirational examples for building a better world, focused on the well- being of humans.
Aim of the Foundation is also to employ some of these young patients and make them part of our staff. I’m one of those.:-). Today the foundation team is made of 13 people.
Two years ago Vibram invited us to join them in this incredible space called Connection Lab (whose purpose is to create connections among totally different realities – cross-disciplinary learning) in order to collaborate on new projects and share not only the working space but also ideas and inspirations and create something new. In May 2018 we launched together a pair of sneakers with Vibram soles and we are in discussion to design a smart sole with a social purpose (like, more steps you take, more money you donate to someone who is in need). And as said, on Jan16th we are going to have a team building day.
We immensely value our relationship with Vibram that so far, on top of the projects run together, gave us the possibility to hire two new staff members not to mention the incredible journey from Milan to Cortina d’Ampezzo riding e-bike we did last May: 500km in a week time to show that people with health issues can also do extraordinary things – cause they are not their illness. They are human beings first of all. Normality doesn’t exist. Thanks also to Vibram this journey named “Il viaggio delle stelle” (The Journey of the Stars) has turned into a docu-movie and the prime vision was last week in Cortina.
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