Milan, 25 October 2024 – The Guardians of Beauty project resumes after the summer break, a national initiative that involves collaboration between the public, private and third sectors to promote the social re-inclusion of vulnerable people through their involvement in care activities in some city areas. The experience restarts with a new team that entered service in October and will operate in the Brera and Moscova districts.
Each group at work is made up of a team leader, interns and volunteers: these are people who experience personal or social fragility, and who through this project have the opportunity to return to the world of work and start a path towards autonomy.
The teams in Milan are managed by Consorzio Farsi Prossimo, promoted by Caritas Ambrosiana, which carries out the project through the B cooperatives for job placement (Detto Fatto, Sammamet and Vesti Solidale) and type A cooperatives which provide personal services (Farsi Prossimo, Plots and Sociosphere).
The teams’ activity is supported by the cooperative operators who, through their daily work, build relationships, networks and opportunities so that the participants can get the best out of this experience.
“We continue with conviction – declares the councilor for Welfare and Health Lamberto Bertolé – to support the Guardians of Beauty project as an opportunity to cultivate beauty and, at the same time, support fragile people in a process of acquiring or reacquiring their autonomy. An ambitious objective which, from a collaborative perspective, we share with the Third Sector which works every day in the local areas to support those who struggle and with the city’s productive fabric which wants to contribute to building an increasingly inclusive Milan”.
“This restart after the summer break – explains Ileana Malfatto, representative of the Custodi del Bello project for Consorzio Farsi Prossimo – is an important opportunity because precisely with the presence and activity of the people involved in the team, we will be able to meet and talk about the project to many people. The Custodians were eager to get started and the team will meet daily not only people living in the neighborhood but also students, workers, tourists, contributing to the welcome in one of the many beautiful places in Milan. The experience of hospitality is central to the Custodi del Bello project: everyone is welcomed and at the same time a protagonist, as they are and with what they can share”.
The project, born from an experiment by the Farsi Prossimo Consortium in 2017, has evolved over the years thanks to a happy partnership between the third sector, voluntary work, the business world and the municipal administration.
For a few years the project has opened up to collaboration with private financiers: companies and production companies that operate in Milan and want to help take care of the city and its most vulnerable citizens by donating funds to the project to finance the activation of new teams . The launch of this new team was the result of a meeting between Algebris Investments, Consorzio Frasi Prossimo and the Municipality of Milan.
“It is a great honor for me that Algebris has joined Custodi del Bello – comments Davide Serra, Founder and CEO of Algebris Investments – a virtuous example of collaboration between businesses, the third sector and the Municipality to generate a significant positive impact on the local community . This project combines two themes to which, as an entrepreneur, I am particularly attached: the desire to restore value to society through the creation of opportunities for social and work reintegration, and the enhancement of the beauty of public places in the city of Milan”.
The long collaboration with the Municipality of Milan has also made it possible to involve in the work of the teams also citizens who were previously beneficiaries of citizenship income required to carry out the Puc (projects useful to the community) and subsequently the recipients of Inclusion Allowance and Training Support and work.
To date, over 380 people have passed through the Custodi del Bello project.
Over the years, despite the economic crisis and the pandemic, 36% of them have found employment opportunities or socio-work inclusion.
