The "Common House" Project in Naples
With “innovation with social impact” means a new way of planning the social, to be considered no longer as a mere cost for the few, but as an opportunity for economic and social development for all.
What makes the difference is the word “impact”. So let's try to understand what it consists of.
It is a question of acting not only on the single need, but on its effects on the entire community. In social impact planning, in fact, attention is paid not only to the outputs, but also to the outcomes.
The outputs are the activities: for example, in a project aiming at the education of disadvantaged subjects, the activities are the number of people who are made to go to school and those who leave it with a diploma.
The outcomes are the results: in the above example, the results can range from an increase in the employment rate of people who have graduated to a consequent increase in community wealth and a decrease in petty crime.
Why is "The Common House" an impact project?
Because it doesn't just want to be a project of great social value, but also an opportunity to do social things while paying attention to the entire community, also bringing a benefit to it and creating wealth, including economic wealth, through the creation of jobs.
The previous
Among its many activities, FOQUS Foundation he promoted, since 2016, the ARGO Center: a day-care center for children, teenagers and adults with cognitive disabilities. The aim is to allow children to improve basic personal and social skills through workshops and individual and group activities. The activities take place in kindergarten and primary school classes for children aged 3 to 10; while, for young people and adults aged 17 to 35, for the whole day, in the spaces of the Center's headquarters, at the FoQus Foundation. Operators and educators, on a therapeutic level and neurobehavioral protocols, collaborate with the Neuropsychomotor course of the Vanvitelli University and the National Association of Neuropsychomotor specialists; with the University of Naples "Federico II", with local ASLs, rehabilitation centers and social and health structures.
The experience of the Centre's operators in recent years has shown that people with disabilities, and even more so their families, consult our services certainly highlighting specific problems in their concreteness, but also a wider, and sometimes rather indefinite, request for accompaniment.
The “La Casa Comune” project was therefore born as a natural evolution of the experience of the ARGO Centre.
Goals
1. The general objective of the project is to guarantee a improvement of the quality of life of young people with disabilities and their families through a housing route protect, aimed at achieving autonomy. There cannot be a real path in this sense without involving the sphere of living, understood as a place in which to develop specific skills, within a context that must be as stimulating as possible. Keeping this horizon in mind, the changes that the project intends to produce follow two parallel and complementary directions:
– firstly, it intends to accompany the subjects involved in a process aimed at strengthening existing skills and attaining housing independence;
– secondly, while in residential solutions for the disabled the house is par excellence what separates and divides "diversity" from "normality", in our project it wants to become a place that unites, a physical and symbolic space for the encounter of differences within which everyone can be the bearer of both needs and resources for their roommates.
2. The Common House also provides for a room used as a laboratory for the production of chocolate, with the aim of offering, in addition to housing autonomy, also a job opportunity, strengthening the path of autonomy of the guests.
Who is the Common House intended for?
“The Common House” is aimed at people with serious disabilities and without family support, in particular with disabilities not determined by natural aging or by pathologies connected to senility with certification of serious handicap, pursuant to art. 3, paragraph 3, of law 104/1992, between the ages of 18 and 64, missing both parents or whose parents are unable to provide adequate support or with the prospect of losing family support.
The main purpose is to support the innovative forms of residence envisaged by law 112/2016, through housing solutions that offer hospitality to no more than 5 people with cognitive disabilities.
From the single need to the public value
Not only will the Common House bring benefits to the subjects involved, but precisely in the spirit of a project in favor of the community, it is essential to highlight how it can bring:
– relief to the families of the guests,
– new highly specialized jobs (personal care, operators and educators for assistance to people with disabilities),
thereby creating wealth for the entire community.
Where is the Common House located?
The Common House will be located in the Spanish Quarters of Naples, in an apartment that will have to be adapted and transformed to accommodate people with cognitive disabilities and the educators and operators who will accompany the new experience.
The Quartieri Spagnoli are one of the most disadvantaged and intensely populated areas of the city of Naples: an orthogonal road network, dense and with a very high human density (more than 50,000 people in just over 1.5 sq km).
A socially problematic area, emblem of the contradictions of the contemporary city and the inadequacy of traditional public intervention policies, where 10% of children from all over Naples live and where the highest rates of unemployment, inemployment, crime and school dropout are recorded in the 'Europe.
The house can be identified among the disused public buildings, to be obtained under concession pursuant to the aforementioned law on the Third Sector, e to be regenerated.
