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The five research projects on the theme of 'Equality and Recovery', selected by the Polisocial Award 2021 and funded by 5 per mille donations to the Politecnico, are coming to an end. The public health emergency caused by the pandemic intensified imbalances and marginalisation and led to the concrete risk of an increase in social inequality; the projects funded acted according to a logic of economic, social and cultural recovery, promoting the development of methods, strategies, tools and technologies to reduce inequalities and facilitate access to resources and opportunities for particularly vulnerable people, social groups or communities.

The Co-WIN project has developed two pilot experiments to recover and enhance properties confiscated from criminal organisations. Andrea Campioli, Dean of the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and scientific co-ordinator of the project, tells us all about it: "We have been restoring properties confiscated from the mafia, to return them to society in a reconstructed state. As part of this process, we set up worksite-school experiences, getting both a quota of vulnerable individuals (for example, immigrants or unemployed people), to whom we offered a vocational retraining course before starting work, and a quota of university students, guaranteeing them “on-the-job” experience, involved in work at the construction site". 

HOW REAL ESTATE CONFISCATION WORKS  

The legal procedure is as follows: following a judicial process, real estate is confiscated (the whole process usually takes eight years) and an agency (Agenzia Nazionale per i Beni Sequestrati e Confiscati - ANBSC) allocates it to various municipalities. Municipalities in Lombardy (the area on which the research focused) can apply for regional funding for the redevelopment of real estate received in ownership: “Regione Lombardia will bear 50% of the renovation costs, within a pre-established budget and subject to a plan being presented", Campioli explains. Properties confiscated from the mafia are generally small-scale: garages, parking, flats and semi-detached and detached houses. In Lombardy alone there are more than 3,200 such properties, 1,242 of which have been allocated to municipalities for redevelopment. 

This is where Co-WIN comes in, proposing the development of a 'win-win' collaborative relationship between the different parties involved: the public administration, trainees, training providers, construction companies and the community. "In our two ongoing pilot projects, a row of terraced houses in Gerenzago (Pavia) and a farmhouse in Cisliano (Milan), students from Politecnico di Milano were involved as trainees, responsible for following the required procedure for the redevelopment of the assets, directly within the municipal offices, and learning the profession onsite, working alongside the works supervisor". Once redeveloped, the assets are returned to the community: "They are generally sold to third sector entities with a social vocation, such as associations and NGOs, or are granted for use by families in need", Campioli explains. 

VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR VULNERABLE INDIVIDUALS 

Un importante aspetto sociale del progetto è quello del coinvolgimento di soggetti fragili nei lavori in cantiere: “La nostra idea è dare loro la possibilità di qualificarsi professionalmente per poi entrare nel mercato del lavoro”, ci dice Campioli. “Abbiamo stipulato una convenzione con ESEM-Cpt (Ente Scuola Edile Milanese) per garantire a queste persone di seguire a titolo gratuito corsi di formazione abilitanti e professionalizzati al lavoro nei cantieri edili”. Ma trovare soggetti disponibili non è stato così semplice come previsto: “In questa fase abbiamo coinvolto il Coordinamento Nazionale Comunità di Accoglienza (CNCA), un’associazione che si occupa della  accoglienza e dell’inserimento lavorativo di soggetti fragili, e l’ENAIP (enti di formazione professionale),ma forse abbiamo sbagliato la modalità di veicolazione delle proposte di tirocinio: ad esempio abbiamo proposto sei mesi di tirocinio, ma molti immigrati hanno  la possibilità di vivere nei centri di accoglienza per soli tre mesi prima di trovarsi a dover essere economicamente indipendenti, per cui non possono permettersi di partecipare a programmi di formazione così lunghi e per esigenza si rivolgono al mercato del lavoro in nero. Ora abbiamo riformulato i termini del percorso di tirocinio extra-curriculare in modo diverso e abbiamo ricevuto diverse candidature”. 

A MODEL TO ADMIRE AND REPLICATE 

The project is in its final stretch: the research team has been granted a four-month extension on the official deadline (set for 15 June), so that they can continue the work at the two pilot worksites. By October, everything should be completed. 

The aim of the Co-WIN project is to produce a model that can then be replicated throughout Italy, so that further worksite-school experiences can be set up systematically: "We want this to go on regardless of whether Politecnico is there: we are trying to get the documentation Regione Lombardia needs, so that our project is not just a one-off".

One of the partners involved in this is an industrial entity which has donated building materials to the companies doing the work: for the businesses, it offers an image payback in terms of social sustainability. 'The plan for the future is to also set up a register of businesses willing to give up materials for free'. The project will be presented on 21 and 22 April in Naples, as part of the Second Exhibition Forum on Confiscated Assets.

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The five research projects on the theme of 'Equality and Recovery', selected by the Polisocial Award 2021 and financed thanks to '5 per mille' pre-tax donations to Politecnico di Milano, are coming to an end. The public health emergency resulting from the pandemic contributed to intensifying inequality and marginalisation and actualising the risk of an increase in disparity; therefore, the funded projects work towards economic, social and cultural recovery by promoting the development of methods, strategies, tools and technologies aimed at reducing inequalities and facilitating access to resources and opportunities for particularly vulnerable people, social groups or communities.

TRANSLATED FROM BUREAUCRATIC LANGUAGE, THERE IS A GAP IN CHILDCARE SERVICES 

The starting point of the Equi06 project is the Italian Legislative Decree no 65/2017, which proposed the creation of an "integrated 0-6 system" combining the two nursery-school segments (what used to be called 'kindergartens'), historically developed separately with different educational approaches, managers and institutional bodies. ‘The level of development of the two segments is also uneven,’ emphasises Stefania Sabatinelli, the project's scientific manager. "In Italy, kindergartens are attended by almost all children between the ages of 3 and 5, as opposed to nurseries addressed to 0-2 year-old children".

The integrated 0-6 system is still a work in progress: at the pedagogical level, some ministerial guidelines have been issued and the NRRP provides funding for the creation of 0-6 poles, ie facilities dedicated to educating children from zero to six years old. Why is it necessary to integrate these two educational segments? "Comparative literature tells us that in countries where services are organised in a single cycle (those in northern Europe) the quality levels of supply are higher and more homogeneous", explains Sabatinelli. "Such single cycle could also favour earlier access by children: at the moment, the costs of enrolment in crèches are often very high, unlike those in kindergartens, and this is a barrier for many families". Early access to high quality services is important because children learn to learn and to be with others in their first years: it is at this stage that the inequalities that lead to children having unequal starting points already at the beginning of compulsory schooling can be countered more effectively.

THE IMPACT OF AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM 

The Equi06 project has three main research objectives, ie mapping the existing 0-6 services in Milan, investigating the conditions of a specific territorial context and experimenting the transformation of an existing space to foster 0-6 integration. 

"Mapping the existing 0-6 services in Milan has been a useful research action in itself. We could locate them on a map and such operation had never been done before", Sabatinelli emphasises. "Now we also know the relationships between crèches and kindergartens, public and private services, municipal and state services, continuous and supplementary services". 

With this information, the researchers identified an area on which to focus their study: "We chose the Comasina district because there we found a high potential demand for 0-6 services, along with several indicators of social fragility", explains Sabatinelli. Narrowing the field of research even further, the team selected a 1.5x1.5-kilometre box in the district, within which there are public, private, municipal and state services, as well as a multi-service municipal day-care centre where the two educational cycles are offered in the same building though operating separately. 

The last objective, coordinated by the Department of Design and still in progress, consists in working on the Merloni multi-service building with the coordinator of services in the area, some educators and some parents, in order to ponder on how to improve the spaces inside and outside the building and the routes to get there, as well as to understand how the educational environment can be transformed and improved with minimal interventions. 

The pedagogical aspect is not neglected: although it does not fall within the competence of the Politecnico departments being involved, it is supplemented by external partners - Comune di Milano, the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (INDIRE), Save the Children, Gruppo Nazionale Nidi e Infanzia, Legacoop Lombardia.

The final objective is to define a guidance document on the learning achieved: ‘Our ambition is to draw general lessons, guidelines that can be useful beyond this specific context. It will be interesting to replicate the project in other contexts - and perhaps even on other scales,' Sabatinelli concludes. 

The five research projects on the theme of 'Equality and Recovery', selected by the Polisocial Award 2021 and funded by 5 per mille donations to the Politecnico, are coming to an end. The public health emergency caused by the pandemic intensified imbalances and marginalisation and led to the concrete risk of an increase in social inequality; the projects funded acted according to a logic of economic, social and cultural recovery, promoting the development of methods, strategies, tools and technologies to reduce inequalities and facilitate access to resources and opportunities for particularly vulnerable people, social groups or communities.

The RESTARTHealth project (short for Renewable Energy Systems To Activate Recovery Through the Health sector) aims to optimise the energy efficiency of Uganda's second largest hospital, St Mary's Lacor Hospital, which is located in Gulu District. "We have been working for some time with Lacor Hospital, whose technical manager for the past few years has been Jacopo Barbieri, an alumnus of the Politecnico di Milano," explains Riccardo Mereu, RESTARTHealth project manager and researcher in the Energy department. With more than 600 workers, many of whom live in the hospital complex, energy efficiency at Lacor is not only a question of medical equipment: "The hospital complex includes guesthouses, canteens and employee accommodation," explains Mereu. It is like a small town of two thousand people (the families of employees also live 'on campus', in addition, of course, to the patients); so, we also have to think about the energy used for cooking (at the moment, almost always wood fires), for washing with hot water, for lighting the houses and for transport.

AN IMPROVABLE HYBRID ELECTRIC SYSTEM 

Currently, the complex is already equipped with a good number of photovoltaic panels, which produce hundreds of kilowatt-hours of energy. "Photovoltaic panels are undoubtedly the most suitable energy source for the location," says Mereu. "The resources in the area certainly do not allow us to consider hydropower or wind power, while we have looked into the possibility of producing biogas from hospital waste. We have to work out if there is sufficient waste to produce enough biogas”.

One of the main limitations is the fact that the energy produced by photovoltaic panels cannot be fed into the national grid: "There is a lack of bi-directional exchange, which means that a lot of energy is lost and efficiency is impacted," explains Mereu. "The system already is, and has to be, hybrid: there are currently photovoltaic panels, the electricity grid and some diesel generators for when the power goes out completely. The idea is that, in future, these three sources will be exploited in an optimised way compared to now, with reduced energy losses and improved management of power peaks, which could put pressure on the hospital's internal network". The exchange between renewable electricity grids and conventional grids is a very topical issue on our continent too, which is looking for a way for them to be fully integrated in terms of both infrastructure and administration.

THE CREATION OF GUIDELINES 

The long-term goal, in addition to the energy efficiency of the hospital, is to create guidelines that can be useful in other contexts. St Mary's Lacor hospital is a special case, because it is not state-run but private, and is run by an Italian foundation: however, the researchers also looked at other case studies, such as some state hospitals and those run by private entities such as Emergency, to get a more comprehensive overview of the situation. 

In addition to the main hospital site, tests were also conducted in three other outpatient clinics located in rural areas 30-40 miles away. "The project ends at the end of May 2023: we are currently analysing the data collected, from which we will derive the information necessary to draw up specific and general energy guidelines. We will evaluate the potential impact of certain energy improvements in the hospital complex, such as the possibility of a bi-directional exchange between the national grid and photovoltaic panels, the installation of electric stoves, the introduction of additional solar panels for water heating, and the possibility of electrifying the internal transport of medical waste. For the time being, we are stopping at the feasibility study: implementation will depend on the hospital obtaining private funding and donations, or winning public or private calls,” Mereu concludes.