Starting in 2022, the social enterprise Quid, active to transform Made in Italy fashion and make the labor market more inclusive for women, will create a European experimentation and awareness network on the labor inclusion of migrant women. Marcegaglia Foundation joins the network with a three-year contribution focused on the activities that will take place in Italy.
In the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, third sector entities, access points for women who need to re-enter the labor market, were on the one hand overloaded with requests for help and on the other unable to guarantee the continuity of routes. In this context, the collaboration between the non-profit and for-profit sectors in creating sustainable employment opportunities for this extremely fragile and vulnerable target is crucial.
In the post-pandemic scenario, the third sector will be able to respond effectively to the emergency of unemployment of migrant women with low formal skills if it is able to develop resilient networks and good practices aimed at long-term inclusion and socio-work reintegration. Hence the idea of the Worldplaces project aimed at sharing and developing experiences between the actors involved.
The Worldplaces project is coordinated by Quid with the scientific support of the University of Vigo (Spain) which will structure design thinking paths for 4 young social enterprises, each committed to developing a focus linked to the theme of social and work integration for women.
In Italy, the Worldplaces network will involve profit and non-profit organizations from Emilia Romagna, Trentino Alto Adige, Lombardy and Friuli Venezia Giulia. The network will be a sharing hub with the aim of gathering the needs, challenges and opportunities of female work integration, co-designing and sharing new practices and raising awareness in the for-profit sector of migrant women’s work inclusion, through targeted events.
Throughout the duration of the project Quid will work to create and consolidate a network of skills exchange. The Worldplaces network will meet at the beginning of the project to map needs, best practices and initiatives through two separate sessions, each dedicated to the two halves that together make up the whole of female employment: the public and non-profit sector and the for-profit sector. The sessions will lead to the creation of a ‘Female Work Integration Charter’ which will be launched on 8 March 2022 and a Design Thinking manual dedicated to the labor inclusion of migrant women, available in three languages and disseminated throughout Europe.
With the aim of raising awareness among communities and citizens, at local, regional and national level, the network – in collaboration with the German organization Grand Beauty on Tour – will launch an online campaign dedicated to creative activities that can accompany women of all backgrounds and qualifications to explore the relationship between their professional identity and their working identity. The campaign will involve at least 60 women in 6 European countries. These activities will give life to a pop-up event to be held in Verona or Milan in the summer of 2023.
Finally, starting from the second year of the project, in collaboration with the Quid partners, it will raise awareness of for-profit realities on the issue of labor integration of migrant women, sharing practices and strategies borrowed from the non-profit, through training and experiential events.
