Fly University Project is a non-profit organisation that supports students studying STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, mainly related to the use of Artificial Intelligence.

The aim is to be a bridge between young people, universities and businesses in order to foster employment and better growth conditions for young people, according to the specific objectives of the UN 2030 Agenda.

With Massimo Penzo, President and Founding Partner, we discover what impact economy means to FLY UP.

Interview by Francesco Antonioli.

Watch previous episodes here.

Best practices and innovations in the world of social impact assessment and management. These are the topics at the centre of the 2022 edition of “Social Value Matters Europe“, to be held in Turin on 24 and 25 October. Organised by Social Value Italia, Torino Social Impact and Social Value International, with the support of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondazione CRT, and with the patronage of the City of Turin, the conference will be held at UniCredit University, in via XX Settembre.
Among the first objectives of the two-day event is to highlight the fundamental role that measuring social value can play in creating a sustainable world. For the organisers, in fact, by transforming the way we measure value, society will be able to make better decisions that will increase well-being, protect the environment and reduce social inequality.

The conference will be held in English and will bring together participants from the international Social Value network (Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Arabia), and from different sectors (public, private, for-profit and not-for-profit) to discuss a way of making decisions that listens and responds to stakeholder voices, that is transparent and accountable, and that protects people and the planet at local, regional and global levels.
Prominent figures in the world of evaluation will include Ben Carpenter of Social Value International, Irene Basile of Oecd, Carola Carazzone of Assifero, Alessia Gianoncelli of Evpa, and Mario Calderini of Torino Social Impact, among others.

The choice of Turin is not random, the Piedmontese capital is in fact considered among the best territories to seize the opportunities arising from the affirmation of the entrepreneurial and financial paradigm of the impact economy. Turin is home to a new generation of social incubators and accelerators, to important social impact-oriented capitals, to international organisations dedicated to global social challenges, to a strong orientation towards corporate social responsibility, to the propensity of public administrations towards social innovation, and to the ability to create a system between the public, private and third sectors.

In order to learn more about Turin and the examples of social innovation, two visits will be held on the afternoon of the 24th, one at Cascina Fossata, a redevelopment project that aims to give back to the city a quality meeting space to intercept new housing and social needs in a changing territory; and one at the San Salvario neighbourhood house, a workshop for the design and implementation of social and cultural activities, with the participation of associations, citizens, and artistic and cultural operators who work together to create an open and multicultural space, a place for crossroads, meetings and the exchange of activities and people.

The possibility of getting to know each other and networking will be ensured during the conference by the moments of exchange, the breaks and lunches offered during the work and the social dinner at the end of the first day, which will be held at the Cascina Fossata restaurant.

Find the information and updates on the conference programme on socialvaluematters.com

For the tickets click here

In conjunction with the Social Value Matters Europe conference, the Cottino Social Impact Campus is organising the invitation-only training day ‘The intangible value of places’.

The event will be held on Sunday, October 23, at the Lingotto and at the Campus in Turin, with a session composed of two distinct and unique moments.

Participants will have the opportunity to follow a guided tour of the famous Pista 500 in Lingotto with its creator, architect Benedetto Camerana. In the historic FIAT headquarters, recently redeveloped as a multifunctional structure, they will discuss how the regenerative processes of physical spaces contribute to the generation of social and environmental impact.

Following this, at the Cottino Social Impact Campus, there will be a Meeting of minds between leading experts and scholars exploring the skills required for impact assessment in real estate in the context of urban regeneration.

Speakers at the event will include Ryan Daulton, Senior Research Associate for the Impact-Weighted Accounts (IWA) project at Harvard Business School, Mario Calderini, Scientific Advisor of the Cottino Social Impact Campus and Full Professor of Sustainability and Impact Management at the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, Alessandra Oppio, Full Professor of Estimo and Evaluation at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Politecnico di Milano, Patrizia Lombardi, Full Professor in Economic Valuation of Projects and Pro-rector of the Politecnico di Torino, Marella Caramazza, Board Member of the Cottino Social Impact Campus and strategic director of the ‘Centre of Competence for Evaluation and Measurement of Social Impact’ and Danny Casprini is researcher in Technology and Innovation Research on Social Impact at the TIRESIA Research Centre, Politecnico di Milano.

Full programme here

For the second year, Torino Social Impact is a strategic partner of the GEN C: Generazione Changemaker project, promoted and implemented by Agenzia Nazionale per i Giovani and Ashoka Italia.

The initiative aims to create a community of young changemakers who make a positive impact on society.

The call is focused on girls and boys between 13 and 24 years old and mentors between 25 and 35, who have identified a problem, developed an idea to solve it and, after setting up a team, are generating a positive impact in their local area and community, supporting digital, ecological and autonomy transitions.

Applications are open until November 7.

All information here: Gen C Call

In this new episode of Bench-Mark, we get to know the experience of Fondazione per l’Architettura, founded on the initiative of Turin architects in 2002 with the aim of promoting architecture as a discipline at the service of quality of life and social well-being.

Michela Lageard, Councillor for the Foundation, tells us about their vision, which is increasingly open to European projects.

Interview by Francesco Antonioli.

Watch previous episodes here.

In a few days, the startup got an investment by two international business angels and the award “Welfare che impresa!” by Accenture Italian Foundation

Turin, September 16, 2022

Re4Circular is the new project by Atelier Riforma, the innovative social startup with the mission of reducing the environmental impact of the fashion industry through the circular economy. From 2021 the startup has taken a more technological direction, aimed at making the business (and so its positive impact) more scalable.

The valorization of textile waste as a circular resource is still a great challenge today, therefore most of it ends up in landfills (especially in developing countries). Re4Circular technology is aimed at helping the stakeholders of the supply chain to direct each discarded garment towards the best way of recovery (eg reuse, recycling, upcycling, etc.). It is a digital marketplace platform that matches the B2B supply and demand for used clothing, connected to an Artificial Intelligence technology to extract, from the image of the garment, all the useful data for its recovery.

To carry out this ambitious new project, Ferrero and Secondo have dedicated themselves in the last year to the search for investments (in Italy), addressing in particular to so-called “impact” investors, that is, interested in the environmental and social implications of their investment.
“Fundraising in the early-stage phase is one of the key activities of a startup, but it is also one of the most difficult, especially for first-time startuppers. The last year was extremely challenging for us, but we did our best because we deeply believe in the usefulness of our project”. Said Elena, one of the co-founders.

In February 2022 Elena and Sara – while they were attending the Startupbootcamp FashionTech acceleration program – come into contact with Pietro Bonanno and Serra Falk Goldman, business angels originally from San Francisco and settled in Italy for a few years, who were doing an in-depth scouting among the Italian startups.
Bonanno and Falk Goldman are among the founders of the very recent “The 20 fund”, a venture capital firm committed to gender parity.
The fund’s aim is to invest in Italian, female-run, early-stage startups, with a strong vocation for sustainability.
Thus began a very in-depth due diligence (lasting more than 5 months) in which the fund analyzed the economic potential of Re4Circular, its technical feasibility, its positive impact and above all the quality and commitment of the team.
On 12th September Bonanno and Falk Goldman finalized the investment in Atelier Riforma, as private individuals. Objective: to bring the project to a sufficient maturity to attract an even more substantial investment from the fund in the coming months.
“We are continually impressed by the co-founders, Elena Ferrero and Sara Secondo. Their intelligence, dedication and perseverance will contribute to the success of Atelier Riforma and dramatically reduce waste in the fashion industry. No doubt they and Atelier Riforma will have a positive impact on the environment.” said Serra Falk Goldman.

On September 15th another milestone is achieved: Re4Circular is among the 4 winning projects of “Welfare che Impresa!”.
This national competition, promoted by Accenture Italian Foundation, Bracco Foundation, Intesa Sanpaolo, Snam Foundation and many others, is aimed at awarding “projects capable of combining economy and society, to promote a new vision of development”.

The funds from the investment and the prize will be used to implement the automatic cataloging technology for clothes, based on Artificial Intelligence, thanks to the collaboration with three data scientist (who had been involved in developing the proof of concept last spring). The AI algorithm will then be integrated into the marketplace platform, developed in collaboration with the company Huulke. Part of the funds will also be used to file the definitive patent of the technology (of which the trademark has already been filed) and to expand the team. Throughout the autumn, the team (in collaboration with some cooperatives that have already joined as first users) will test the prototype and acque the first metrics on the marketplace.

For the third consecutive year, Torino Social Impact has been involved as an ecosystem in the selection committee of the finalist start-ups, which will be analysed by a pool of partners experienced in this type of activity. This year, the partners involved are I3P, LITA.co Italy, Mamazen, PerMicro, Reseau Entreprendre and SocialFare.

The evaluation work of the Torino Social Impact partners was combined with that of other prestigious members of the selection committee: Anya Capital, BE-COME, Conduit Connect, H-Farm, Human Foundation, Opes, and Toniic.

The seven start-ups on the short list will face a preparation phase for the final pitch. Following the evaluation, an accompanying and further selection phase will begin, leading to the pitch of three finalists, assessed by an international jury.

Marco Gargiulo, Presidente of Consorzio nazionale Idee in Rete and Presidente of Confcooperative Habitat Marche, tells how the Housing Cooperatives and, specifically, those Housing Cooperatives that carry out participatory social housing projects, self-construction and self-recovery can be defined as “exploration communities”.

This meeting is addressed to all people who want to understand how to embark on an unconventional living business, which involves sharing choices, responsibilities and managing their own living environment with a group of people guided by mutualistic principles and objectives with a positive impact on the community and their own city.

The online meeting, organised by Casematte APS, will take place on Thursday 15 September from 18:00 to 19:00. Participate here

The world’s largest annual hackathon dedicated to space and science returns to Turin, Italy: at the beginning of October 2022, the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino (I3P) will host the local event in Piedmont’s capital city for the sixth time, this year back in presence.

The 11^th edition of the international event will take place over two days on the weekend of Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 October 2022, with free participation. The hackathon is based on collaborative challenge solving with the aim of producing open-source solutions in response to some of the challenges that we currently face on Earth and in space. The last global NASA International Space Apps Challenge – Space Apps for short – was attended by more than 28,000 participants from 323 locations in over 160 countries, who produced more than 2,800 projects in response to challenges set by NASA.

How does it work

Traditionally, hackathons are technology development competitions that showcase young talent in many different fields, such as software developers, engineers, designers, students, scientists and anyone with a desire to make a positive impact on the world and on scientific innovation. The Space Apps hackathon is open to all and this year it will again focus on developing real projects in response to global challenges, to be worked on as a team over the two days and presented to the local jury by the end of the event.

For each annual edition, NASA designs new challenges and the Global Organising Team collaborates with local organisers around the world, called Local Leads, to bring the events to life in different cities and thus maximise the chances of participation by enthusiasts on the territory. I3P will therefore host the Turin hackathon, in parallel with the local events in Rome and Cagliari. Joining the event and submitting a project developed during it provides the possibility of being selected not only for the Local Awards, but also as finalists in the running for the Global Awards, whose winners will be announced in January 2023.

The challenges from NASA

This year’s theme is ‘Make Space‘, which emphasises NASA’s commitment to increasing inclusiveness and highlights the focus on science, technology and the exploration of Earth and space in the hackathon as a mass collaboration event, but also refers to the motto ‘there’s always space for one more‘ by Space Apps, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

For the 2022 edition of the hackathon, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration has launched over 20 thematic challenges: their full descriptions and resources will be published on September 15. The challenges span many different topics and are open to contributions from engineers and programmers as well as from artists, designers, storytellers and space enthusiasts. Here are some examples of this year’s challenge titles:

• Build a space biology superhero
• Can Artificial Intelligence preserve our science legacy?
• Earth data analysis developers wanted!
• How does climate change affect you?
• On the way to the sun
• The art in our worlds

The complete list of challenges that can be met with an innovative project can be found on the official Space Apps webpage. In the FAQ on the subject, NASA specifies: “We appreciate the enthusiasm of participants who want to start as early as possible, but we ask that participants start the actual work when the hackathon begins on October 1“.

How to join the event

Everyone can take part in the event: each skill can be useful when working on a team project, regardless of age, education or professional experience. To take part in the hackathon, it is required to register on the individual location page, with a personal profile (existing or new) on the official NASA Space Apps website. After selecting the local event of preference, you will have the opportunity to form a team (recommended size: 3 to 5 people), if you already know the other people with whom you wish to work on a project; otherwise, you will be able to join the new groups that will be formed in attendance at the start of the hackathon.

The Turin edition of NASA Space Apps 2022 will start on Saturday, October 1 at 2 PM CEST and end on Sunday, October 2 at 6 PM CEST. The venue will be I3P headquarters, located in Corso Castelfidardo 30/a within the Campus of Politecnico di Torino, and in particular its Sala Agorà, the large open space at the top of the building where many startuppers contribute every day to writing the future of innovative entrepreneurship. The complete schedule of the two-day hackathon will be published in September.

This year’s Open Living Lab Days – the annual global gathering of Living Labs organised by ENoLL -European Network of Living Labs – will be held in Turin, Italy, from 20 to 23 September at the OGR and is co-organised by the City of Turin, CTE NEXT and Torino City Lab.

The main theme of the event is ‘The city as a Lab, but now for real!”Re-working open innovation environments for inclusive, green and digital transition through emerging technologies’, to which five sub-tracks are linked: Society, Governance, Green & Sustainable, Transformation and Beyond the City.

It will be a specially designed meeting place for policy makers, companies, entrepreneurs, academics and innovators to explore, connect and work together.

Around 400 innovators from Europe and the rest of the world are expected to participate in this annual Living Lab event.

The programme is structured as follows: a training day on the fundamentals of the living lab, two days of international conferences, workshops and ted talks, and study visits to discover the city’s innovation locations.

The City of Turin, specifically, organised the following sessions:

Wednesday 21 September from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

Comparing the Urban Living Labs Models, from large cities to small urban centres: it will be illustrated how city labs are a unique tool to promote innovation in a holistic and inclusive way, involving societal stakeholders in creating long-term impacts for the city to foster the green and digital transition.

Wednesday 21 September from 2.00 p.m. to 3.30 p.m.

Scaling up, scaling out and scaling deep for social innovation, this session will start with an analysis of the role of public authorities and the third sector in social innovation, exploring the replicability of social innovation systems (scaling out) and delving into the roots of social innovation (scaling deep).

Thursday 22 September from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

The House of Emergency Technology in Italy and Beyond, a session in which the project and the first results of CTE NEXT one year after its inception will be illustrated, and the benefits of using 5G and emerging technologies for citizens will be analysed.

Thursday 22 September from 3.45 p.m. to 5.15 p.m.

Living Labs as enablers of the transformation of European cities towards climate neutrality, realised in collaboration with the Energy Center of Turin, the panel aims to analyse how living labs can help to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. The reflection will take place in the context defined by the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities” and the related goal of having the first 100 climate neutral cities by 2030, including Turin.

Discover the program of the event

Register to the event

On 13 and 14 September, the first meeting of the Respondet project will take place in Barcelona, where all the partners involved, such as the City of Turin, the Chamber of Commerce of Turin, Generalitat of Catalonia – Business and Labor Department (Capofila-ES) Confederation of Cooperatives of Catalonia (ES), European Network of Cities and Regions for the Social Economy (ES), Service Public de Wallonie Economie, Emploi, Recherche (BE), Concertation des organisations représentatives de l’économie sociale (BE), Malopolska Voivodship-Regional Centre for Social Policy in Cracow (ROPS) (PL).

The RESPONDET (Regional Social Economy Policies for Sustainable Community-Driven Enviromental Transition) project, within the framework of the COSME European call for proposals, aims to promote local and regional development in order to strengthen the social economy by making common resource management the main element of social sustainability in the Green transition process.

RESPONDET will thus facilitate the convergence of policy lines and an effective transfer of knowledge, but also the building of local and transnational partnerships able to guarantee the sustainability of the project results.

To do so, it will organise its actions around four main thematic strands:

• Promoting the role of the social economy in the constitution of local energy policies
• Strengthening the role of the social economy as a key actor in the development of the local circular economy
• Fostering capacity building within the social economy, within community initiatives and public administration with regard to building a vision guided by the social economy and wise management of resources
• Stimulate cooperation between social economy and organisations

The project’s inaugural meeting will focus on the topic of local energy communities, providing an opportunity for the Turin delegation to exchange views with other European partners in order to foster the growth of these initiatives in our territory.

Discover more

Réseau Entreprendre Piemonte in collaboration with the Turin campus of ESCP Business School and with the impulse and support of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, promotes the call for application aimed at non-profit organizations, companies and startups to participate in the Collective Projects 2022/2023.

The new edition of the Collective Projects 2022/2023 was created with the aim of bringing third sector entities, startups and SMEs closer to an open innovation project aimed at contaminating the different systems they belong to.

The subjects selected to participate in the Collective Projects will access the international network of ESCP, they will have a team of 6 or 7 students, highly motivated and eager to get involved with suitable challenges to test their knowledge and skills, for a total of 240 hours of work in order to develop a business project in one of the following areas of interest: Marketing, Internationalization, Fundraising, Knowledge Management, Business development or Sustainability.

Third sector entities, startups and companies will have the opportunity to work with a young team of students who will work as consultants dedicated to the development of a concrete project, providing insights deriving from their international background and able to experiment new business solutions and facilitate their scalability on the market.
Collective Projects also represent the opportunity, for the organizations / companies involved, of talent acquisition and, at the same time, of career for young people.

The Collective Projects will take place from November 2022 to April 2023 and will involve around 300 students of over 40 different nationalities enrolled in the second year of the Bachelor in Management, divided into 50 teams.

Interested companies, organizations and startups can send their application until 30 September 2022.

Read the project in its entirety

To apply, fill out the application form: here

For more information on Collective Projects click here

The European project  SEED – Social Inovation Ecosystem Development launches a program of Capacity Building activities from September 2022 to April 2023 that includes 11 modules divided into 6 thematic areas:

• Co-design and co-production
• Social Innovation policy
• Financial support for Social Innovation
• Social Innovation business models and new forms of entrepreneurship
• Social Innovation monitoring and assessing
• Digital SI

The SEED Capacity Building program, coordinated by the Politecnico di Milano and by the University of Bologna, is part of the path leading towards the creation the National Competence Centers for Social Innovation in the four partner Countries: Greece, Italy, Romania and Slovenia. Stakeholders from these countries are particularly welcome to attend the programme, which is however free and open to anyone interested to better understand the meaning and implications behind the concept of Social Innovation.

You can check out the full program here.

On Tuesday, September 20, the first meeting entitled “Managing Social Innovation: from past challenges to future opportunities” is scheduled with the following agenda:

12.30 – 12.50: Introduction: Utopic scaling: what went wrong  – Mario Calderini and Ambra Giuliano, Politecnico di Milano
Panel discussion: Federico Mento, Ashoka – Marco Nannini, ImpactHub – SocialFare
12.50 – 13.05: What are the main challenges in managing SI processes and initiatives?
13.05 – 13.20: What are the main challenges in scaling SI?
13.20 – 13.35: What leadership for social innovation?
13.35 – 14.00: Q&A – Discussion with participants

Learn more and register for the event

_________

SEED – Social innovation EcosystEm Development, is funded by the European program EaSI with the City of Turin involved in the role of Lead Partner in partnership with Fondazione Brodolini, Politecnico di Milano, University of Bologna, Politecnico di Torino, Euricse, Fondazione Italia Sociale.

The goal of the project is to support the creation and development of a national Center of Competence for Social Innovation with the aim of enhancing already existing and recognized skills, and at the same time offering tools for training, learning, exchange and growth.

Applications are now open for the second edition of GrandUP! Tech Academy, the free training course for future entrepreneurs and innovative start-ups in the province of Cuneo. The initiative is promoted by Fondazione CRC, in collaboration with I3P, the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino, as part of the multi-year project GrandUP! Tech, aimed at supporting the development of an innovation ecosystem, the dissemination of knowledge, and the birth of new enterprises in the area.

Participation to GrandUP! Tech Academy is completely free of charge. The initiative is aimed at both future innovative entrepreneurs and innovative start-ups already established in the area: the training course is in fact open to all residents or domiciled in the province of Cuneo and entrepreneurs who have set up, or intend to set up, their business there. Project teams may nominate more than one component for participation in the Academy, while each participant or team of participants may present only one business project to be developed during the meetings. It will be possible to register for the course, for which places are limited, until October 16, 2022 by filling in the form available online here.

The new edition of GrandUP! Tech Academy will be presented during the event organized by Fondazione CRC and I3P for Thursday, September 15, 2022, at 6 p.m. CEST at the Rondò dei Talenti in Cuneo, the new educational hub built by Fondazione CRC and inaugurated in July. The event, held in person and in Italian language, will be an opportunity to listen to the testimonies of some of the young entrepreneurial teams supported during the first edition of the Academy, including Eventvm and Glu Glu, and to learn in detail about the programme of the course being launched this year, its opportunities, the application and participation procedures, as well as the partners involved and the context of the innovation support activities carried out to date as part of the GrandUP! Tech project. To register and attend the launch event click here

Following the success of the first edition, launched in 2021, the Academy returns for 2022-2023 to address the fundamental issues for the development of a new enterprise, combining theoretical aspects and practical applications on real cases, with lectures by Politecnico di Torino lecturers and industry experts, joined by I3P analysts who will accompany the participating teams in the development of entrepreneurial projects throughout the course. Among the topics at the centre of the seven meetings scheduled to begin in November 2022: business models, customer discovery processes, performance evaluation metrics, the business plan and fundraising activities, project communication and digital marketing, through to legal and tax aspects in setting up start-ups. The course will conclude with a Pitch Day, scheduled for March 2023, during which participants will present their projects to a panel of experts: the best projects will receive the opportunity to access a pre-incubation course at I3P.

The GrandUP! Tech project and its Academy are being implemented as part of the ‘Memorandum of Understanding for Innovation and the Digitalisation of Businesses in the Province of Cuneo‘, promoted by Fondazione CRC and the Cuneo Chamber of Commerce, which was signed in June 2022 by all the main trade associations in the area, including Confindustria, Confartigianato, Coldiretti, Confcommercio, Legacoop Ufficio Territoriale di Cuneo and Punto Impresa Digitale. Starting from the objective of increasing the effectiveness of initiatives aimed at fostering business start-ups and Open Innovation paths, the protocol intends to actively involve business representatives from the province’s various economic sectors in the establishment of a cohesive, innovative and digitised ecosystem.

“With the new edition of GrandUp! Tech Academy and thanks to the collaboration of I3P, Fondazione CRC’s commitment to innovation-oriented development continues,” said Ezio Raviola, President of Fondazione CRC. “The Academy’s 2022-2023 programme is an important element in the overall strategy that we have adopted, in synergy with the numerous partners who have joined the project, to continue to foster the birth of new start-ups and high-tech companies in the province of Cuneo, with important positive spin-offs in terms of economic development, employment and social impact.”

“The launch of the second edition of GrandUP! Tech Academy is a confirmation of the confidence we share with Fondazione CRC in the vast potential for technological development and innovative entrepreneurship in the Cuneo area,” commented Giuseppe Scellato, President of I3P. “The teams of young startuppers that we have trained and supported during the first cycle of lessons, whose fields of activity range from agribusiness to digital platforms, have shown a strong interest in business culture and the growth opportunities offered by the tools of innovation.“

ConVIVI is an integrated campaign (online and offline) to disseminate and render more poular ideas of collaborative living. Aiming to encourage a new culture of living based on the principles of mutual solidarity,  it is part of the European Days of Collaborative Living initiative (coordinated at the European level since 2013 thanks to the French association Habitat Partecipatif) This initiative networks ecovillages, communities and cohousing which are committed, during the month of May and – after the pandemic – also September, to raising awareness of the world of collaborative living.

This year RIVE – Rete Italiana Villaggi Ecologici (Italian Network of Ecovillages), Rete Italiana Cohousing e Abitare Collaborativo (Italian Network of Cohousing and Collaborative Housing) and MCF – Mondo Comunità e Famiglia (World Community and Family), with the coordination of the Casematte association, have expanded the initiative to the month of September as well. They aim to include all those housing experiences that put interpersonal relationships at the center, with a view to creating a more inclusive and supportive community.

The full program is coming soon here.

Here the map of all international events.