The City of Turin invites you, next 20 September at CSI Next, in Corso Unione Sovietica 214, to the first working table with the Third Sector realities for the challenge 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030, as part of a comparison path aimed at defining shared strategies between the City and the realities of the territory to achieve together the goal of climate neutrality.

In fact, Turin is one of the 100 pilot cities selected by the European Commission to become a virtuous example, reaching the target of zero CO2 emissions by 2030 – 20 years before the rest of Europe.

Such a significant change, in such a short time, can only be achieved collectively and with the commitment, creativity and innovative contribution of all the players in the area.

By participating in the event, you will become part of the “100 Cities” community: a unique opportunity for active participation, networking and comparison, at local and European level.

Subsequent roundtables between the administration, institutional stakeholders, the University of Turin, the Politecnico di Torino and businesses will lead to the drafting of the Climate City Contract (CCC), which will detail the strategies and actions identified together in key sectors such as energy, buildings, waste management and transport.

Fact checker? Cato the Censor? Cheerleader? Tightrope walker? The Amapola 2022 Impact Report opens with a reflection on the agency’s increasingly complex role. “Today, reviewing data, information and stories requires the expertise not of an editor, but of a tightrope walker.”

What were the main benefit data last year? Including days of corporate voluntary work, activities to promote a sustainability culture, projects in collaboration with other benefit corporations and in-house initiatives, Amapola devoted more than 920 hour to its benefit objectives. Among its 2022 projects, Meet the CSR Leaders, in collaboration with Il Salone della CSR e dell’innovazione sociale, created opportunities for young people to meet sustainability professionals over three days of meetings and 10 hours of one-to-one orientation. The agency also provided free sustainability training for more than 470 senior-high-school and university students. Internally, Amapola confirmed its commitment to its people, with flexibility policies, bonuses for employees and co-workers, and in-house training and skill-sharing projects.

 

A question of identity

«At a time of omnipresent sustainability – in the form of action, fortunately, but above all at verbal level – communicating sustainability in a coherent and transparent manner becomes a distinguishing value,» says Amapola founder Luca Valpreda. «It is no coincidence that we are convinced supporters of the movement to add an 18^th goal to the current 17 SDGs: responsible communication. Because there has to be an indissoluble link between our intentions, the words we use, and the facts generated by those words.»

Drawn up in accordance with the latest update of the Global Reporting Initiative and with reference to the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, the 2022 Impact Report sets out the agency’s results and sustainability projects, with a focus on the common benefit objectives Amapola pursues as a benefit corporation. Now in its second year, the publication has also been transformed into a voluntary sustainability report, enlarging the reported dataset and taking a more participatory and dynamic approach to data collection.

«This is a complex journey,» notes agency partner Sergio Vazzoler. «For example, the environment is the focus of many of our cultural and educational initiatives. At the same time, however, our environmental impact as a services company consisting of just under twenty people is relatively modest. Is this a contradiction? Not necessarily: the point is to organise our commitment in an authentic and credible manner.»

This year, the Amapola Impact Report takes the garden as its theme, which it extends to the storytelling and to the graphics-visual project (the work of Daniele Cavallero at Za!Factory).

«Not just any garden,» say Micol Burighel, Beatrice Coni and Elisa De Bonis, the leaders of the agency’s under-36 Impact Board, «but a place where differences are discussed and accommodated, which is open to outside stimuli and influences. And to the unexpected: in our first full year as a benefit corporation (Amapola changed its corporate status in November 2021, ed.), we optimised our internal processes at every level, from strategy to accounting, with the increasing involvement of the whole team.»

The Amapola Impact Report is available here.

The City of Turin as lead partner, with the participation of the University of Turin and the Polytechnic University of Turin as institutional partners, intends to respond to the second Call for Proposals European Urban Initiative – Innovative Actions (EUI-IA) with a deadline on 5 October 2023. To this end, it has published a Call for Proposals to identify the best project proposals and the best partnership for the subsequent co-design of the bid.

Among the topics covered by the Call, the City of Turin intends to address the challenge Harnessing talent in shrinking cities. In this context, the European Urban Initiative (EUI) finances innovative actions to test new solutions that contribute to retaining and attracting talent: placed-based pilot projects that involve local communities in experiments on an urban scale and that integrate the economic, social and environmental dimensions of demographic challenges.

The aim of the projects should be to meet the affordable housing needs of national and international off-campus university students through innovative solutions based on the valorisation of the city’s available real estate assets, but also to offer additional services aimed at improving students’ quality of life and creating a sense of rootedness and belonging to the territory, favouring not only their settlement but also their permanence in Turin at the end of their studies.

The project proposal may be submitted by a grouping of no more than three organisations. Only organisations with legal personality are considered eligible.

Project proposals are eligible whose financial plan respects the maximum limit of 6.000.000 € (including the co-financing share and the budget shares allocated to the City as Lead partner, to all the Delivery partners and to the 3 Transfer partners). Each partner will have to guarantee co-financing of 20% of its share of the budget.

Deadline for submission of applications: Monday 4 September 2023 at 16:00

For all details and to download the application documents, go to the dedicated page of the City of Turin website.

Early July 2023 were important days for the social startup Atelier Riforma: the first entity adopted their #Re4Circular technology for the classification, digitization and valorization of used clothing in the circular economy.

It is Emporio Margherita, managed by Cooperativa Momo in Cuneo province, a project for the collection of used clothing and objects to put them back into circulation, training and giving a job to disadvantaged people.

With the adoption of Re4Circular, the cooperative will also be able to valorize the clothes that are not suitable for reuse or for the target of the Emporio, directing them towards circular professionals/companies that carry out sartorial transformations, recycling of the fiber into regenerated yarns or their re-use in other industries, such as construction or furniture.
Objective: to reduce waste and follow the hierarchy of waste, in order to efficiently direct each garment towards the best form of recovery based on its characteristics and conditions. Moreover, the digitization of Re4Circular will make it possible to collect and transmit data regarding each garment throughout the supply chain, providing monitoring and transparency.

In the coming months, other entities will follow the example of Emporio Margherita, embracing #innovation, #sustainability and the #transparency of their work.