ESC: Future Makers

Margherita Soc. Coop. Soc. ONLUS is a non-profit organization and social enterprise based on the principles of mutuality. Established in 1987, it offers socio-educational and cultural services in response to identified needs, with a strong vocation for multi-level integration and the empowerment of involved people. Currently, we provide different groups suffering from exclusion with high quality lifelong learning, training and support. Our main target groups are children, youths, elderly and persons with disabilities but the Cooperative deals also with different issues focusing on cooperation, migration and human rights, aiming to activate the local community through the organisation of public events and meetings, fostering active citizenship and responsible participation at every level. Our vision is to create a socially responsible territory, an inclusive community, in which solidarity, integration and active participation are shared values. Our mission is to work together with people and local stakeholders to make every person the protagonist of his/her own life. We develop and manage social projects and services promoting social inclusion, active citizenship and a culture of solidarity. The main principles guiding us are: * Territoriality. The territory is a key stakeholder and we always take into account its resources and needs. * “Domiciliarità” (Home-care). It guides our social work, it means taking into account life-stories, and life-context of end-users, looking for the best solution, thinking that every activity has to promote participation and give value to participants’ resources. * Work with the community. Community quality life may improve only if the relations between people create identity and are based on shared values. The work with the community is the main way to promote collective interests and develop human capital. Our mission and principles are combined with European Solidarity Corps values, objectives and principles, which aspire to strengthen cohesion and solidarity in Europe by providing active citizenship participation and volunteering opportunities for young people. Since now, EU volunteering projects (and EVS) have contributed greatly to provide young people (including disadvantaged ones) an opportunity of growth and engagement, fostering social inclusion. Moreover, each project is progressively increasing the sense of solidarity and belongingness to the European Union. Margherita provides services through day-care structures and home care. For us, it is very important to support disadvantaged people at their place, so that we empower the whole familiar context and try to activate its potentialities. Our beneficiaries are about 93 disabled people, 280 children/youths, and 142 elders. Daily activities carried out with end-users are various and aim at their growth, well-being and self-determination. Each activity is set and built in connection with the local community, formed by associations, authorities, and the citizens themselves, maintaining high quality standards. In fact we rely on a certified management system compliant with ISO 9001:2015 and with the social accountability standard SA8000:2014 for corporate social responsibility. This is a guarantee of compliance with ESC principles of equal treatment, equal opportunities and non-discrimination, avoidance of job substitution, provision of high-quality activities with a learning dimension, safe and decent environment and conditions. Moreover, we realize training and awareness raising and socio-cultural events directed to involve end-users, local groups of volunteers and the whole community. Training patterns that we develop are linked to emerging territory-related issues (i.e. equity and inclusion, active citizenship and participation, youth participation, EU promotion, etc.). Among our activities, EU projects gained importance during the last 5 years and helped us to bring innovation in what we do every day. Until now we coordinated 12 KA1 Erasmus+ projects (of which 10 EVS projects), participated in other 4. We are now running 3 ECS projects and another one is going to start in the next months. We are also involved in two KA2 projects (MIND INCLUSION 2.0, RURAL NEEDS & MOBILE LEARNING). Our local network includes local businesses and cooperatives, 21 Local Authorities, Local associations, families of end-users, primary, secondary and high schools, about 25 European partners from previous and current projects, the Regional Veneto Authority, Local Health Authorities, libraries, 6 Centres for elderly (including our centres) and 4 among National and European networks. Since 2013, we are members of the European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA) and we opened up to a European dimension promoting several EU projects (including EVS).