Social Inclusion
We promote social inclusion as a key value in creating value for communities
The marginalisation of the most vulnerable is damaging for the entire community from all perspectives. Everyone can actually make their own contribution to developing the local area and the community in which they live, but they need support and a solid and inclusive social network.
On the strength of this belief, we support many projects targeted at social inclusion in different areas.
Sport is a powerful way of bringing people together socially and through our projects we support its strong values: loyalty, sense of belonging, determination and team work.
Insieme
INSIEME is a three-year project created in collaboration with CUS Milano Rugby and the Municipality of Milan to promote sport for young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and at risk of exclusion in several outer-Milan districts. The initiative, launched in 2017 by the Quarto Oggiaro zone, was subsequently extended to via Padova and Baggio. In addition to the teaching of the sporting disciplines of rugby, volleyball and track and field, we also provide a psychologist who offers support for the most difficult family situations. Group volunteers also took part activities in the field. The Group has also financed the refurbishment of the most run down sports facilities in the areas involved. During the lockdown period, despite the training sessions being suspended some volunteers from CUS Milano were out distributing food parcels to people in difficulty, also thanks to the co-operation of Mediobanca staff members. To help families in caring for their children during the summer period, CUS Milano took part in the Summer School run by the Milan municipal council, providing recreational and educational activities. Given the success of the initiative, we have renewed our support for the 2020-23 period as well.
In September 2021 a new rugby pitch was inaugurated at the San Giovanni Bosco parish oratory, in the Baggio district of Milan.
The INSIEME project has seen more than 1,000 young people from the suburbs of Milan involved since 2017.
Mediobanca Sport Camp Group
This year too we decided to bring the values of sport to the challenging environment of prison, running our multi-sport camp at the “Cesare Beccaria” young offenders’ institution for the sixht year. The camp offers the detainees an opportunity to take part in a variety of sports for a week, in a competitive environment which instills respect for the rules and fair play. We also carried out maintenance and reports to the sports facilities as part of our involvement. Last year different volunteers take part in the activities each year, working together with the staff.
Childre&Future
CMB Monaco including with the involvement of its own staff, took part in the No Finish Line marathon for charity to support the Children & Future association which helps to protect children and ensure that their rights are respected. CMB also supports the Be Safe charity which combats drunk driving.
Social and job inclusion
We promote and support projects that address difficult family and personal situations, by attempting to reintegrate young people at risk of truancy and social exclusion into the community and job networks.
Woodworking Academy
The Woodworking Academy represents, for us at Mediobanca, a stand-out project in the field of social inclusion. Set up on the back of a three-year partnership of Mediobanca and CheBanca!with Cometa Foundation, the Academy is an artisan start-up which focusses heavily on social inclusion and offers job opportunities to young people from difficult social, economic and personal backgrounds. The undertaking, now in its third year of activity, aims to become a sustainable and independent business entity which produces services and products of excellence in furniture and interior design and, at the same time, aims to help young people and marginalised young people in their future personal and professional growth. The project has been confirmed for the coming year. Mediobanca and CheBanca! have renewed their long-term partnership with Associazione Cometa to run a project under the name of Accademia del Legno (the “Academy of Woodworking”), now in its sixth year of activity
Mission Bambini and Mediobanca join forces again to provide more inclusive schooling in vulnerable areas
This year too we have consolidated our partnership with Fondazione Mission Bambini in the area of inclusive education.
A new project has been launched to help 400 children and young people of elementary and middle school age at two comprehensive institutions located in socially vulnerable areas on the outskirts of Milan and Rome.
The initiative entails redevelopment of the school premises, with the help of the corporate social volunteering scheme promoted by the Mediobanca Group, in which staff members have taken part in repainting the inside areas, including classrooms and corridors, and launch of a counselling service to provide psychological and emotional support for the schoolchildren in a dedicated area (“Spazio Mission Bambini”) to be opened in a school in Rome.
The initiative has also involved re-greening an area of the metropolitan city of Milan, by planting 500 new trees and plants, again with the support of a group of volunteers from the Mediobanca Group.
Read the press release here
In 2022, the partnership involved redeveloping the outside areas of schools from an educational perspective by creating a sensory garden, developed as part of a corporate volunteering project promoted by the Mediobanca Group, providing psychological and emotional support for the children through the creation of a dedicated area (Spazio Mission Bambini), and enhancing the schools’ computer facilities.
Over a thousand new trees were planted on the outskirts of Milan with the participation of Group volunteers.
In 2021, again in partnership with Mission Bambini, we supported a project entitled “Look to the Future”, which involved: enhancing schools’ provision in terms of computer equipment, improving the state of repair of school buildings through corporate volunteering activity, and education for sustainable development, with a thousand new trees planted with the help of Group volunteers.
The prisoners ask why
This initiative, promoted together with l’Arte di vivere con Lentezza Onlus and in collaboration with Kasa dei Libri, involves the world of prisons with the goal of promoting their social inclusion through reading. Major Italian writers take part in the project, who answer questions from prisoners throughout a series of meetings organised in the prisons signed up to the programme. The project started to also involve group volunteers from the second edition. The project was scheduled to run for the third time in the spring of 2020, but owing to Covid-19 has been postponed, seeing as the writers and volunteers were not able to enter the prisons at the time.
Future Frontiers
Through Mediobanca UK, we launched a partnership with the charity that offers young people from disadvantaged backgrounds tailored career coaching meetings to help get them into the world of work, also thanks to the direct intervention of employees in the role of voluntary trainers.
Healthcare inclusion
Health is an inalienable human right. Assistance for the sick is not only important from a medical point of view, but from a psychological perspective. For this reason, we support numerous charities active in the Milan area in the health and socio-assistance domain.
ITALIAN LEAGUE AGAINST CANCER
CheBanca! has also chosen to support the Italian league against cancer for the Milan-MonzaBrianza area, by strengthening the Childcare programme for children and young people with cancer and their families, with the objective of providing them with care and assistance throughout the entire period in which they are in hospital.
VIDAS
VIDAS provides complete healthcare and assistance free of charge to patients suffering with terminal cancer, both at home and in the Casa Vidas hospice in Milan. We pledged our contribution to the association the Casa Sollievo Bimbi which provides care and relief for children and young people at advanced stages of incurable diseases and their families.
Children of the Dawn
RAM Active Investments, through the RAM Active Philanthropy Foundation, backs this organisation based in South Africa which supports initiatives for the care of orphans as a result of their parents dying from AIDS.
1001Fontaines
RAM Active Investments supports this association which seeks to improve the health of the rural populations in India, Cambodia and Madagascar by offering them sustainable and independent access to safe drinking water.
Terres des Hommes Valais
RAM Active Investments supports this Swiss organisation which, as part of a “specialised care” programme, welcomes children with diseases and malformations who require specialised operations and advanced technologies not available in their country of origin.
