Three challenges for a more accessible world
What strategies does Destinazione Autonomia adopt with its Life Project??
CDI: The Life Project represents a paradigm shift: no longer is the person adapted to existing services, but services are organized around the person. For many years, the system operated according to a performance-based logic. It was a necessary model that ensured important protections, but it also produced fragmentation: separate interventions, divided competencies, and pathways that do not communicate with each other. Social and health services ran in parallel, school and work were disconnected, and housing and inclusion were treated as distinct areas. The result is that people and families are often forced to act as the link between services that do not communicate. Destinazione Autonomia addresses this issue through several specific strategies. The first is institutional integration. A call for proposals, initiated by Fondazione Cariplo and shared with the Lombardy Region, expected to be published in the coming months, will ask territories to work in networks, activating shared responsibility among public entities, the Third Sector, and associations of people with disabilities. This is not just about creating formal partnerships, but about sharing objectives, tools, and responsibilities. The Life Project becomes the pivot around which resources are coordinated, avoiding duplication and discontinuity. The second strategy is genuine personalization. Each project must start from listening to the person and defining concrete goals: housing, employment, participation in cultural and social life. This requires flexibility, adaptability, and an evaluation focused on life outcomes, not just completed activities. The third strategy, which has always been a reference point for our Foundation, is investment in replicable models. Rather than funding isolated interventions, the goal is to support the creation of practices that can become a lasting asset for the territories. The aim is not to multiply projects, but to strengthen local systems capable of ensuring continuity and coherence. Finally, there is a cultural choice: recognizing the person with a disability as an active subject, a rights-holder, not a passive recipient of interventions. Associations and representative organizations are called to participate not only in implementation but also in defining priorities and models. Overcoming fragmentation is not a technical exercise—it is a process of shared responsibility.
What are the conditions for this transformation to become structural?
CDI: The first condition is that the Life Project becomes an ordinary reference in territorial planning. If it remains confined to an experimental dimension, it will not impact the system’s structure. The second condition concerns the training and culture of operators: no reform can take hold without widespread awareness of its meaning. As for technologies, they represent a great opportunity for innovation, but their effectiveness depends on the ability to guide them according to ethical principles. AI, in particular, can become an enabling condition only if used to enhance human relationships, improve understanding of needs, and support personal autonomy, without ever reducing people to a set of data or replacing professional judgment and active participation. When technological innovation and responsibility advance together, and AI functions as a tool serving decisions and inclusion, it can help consolidate lasting and generative change—it can become an ally in an inclusion project.
Moving on to ZeroNeet what defines this challenge?
BA: The initiative, launched in 2025 and active in Lombardy and the provinces of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Novara, adopts an integrated approach combining three dimensions: preventing school dropouts, addressing the NEET condition (young people Not in Education, Employment, or Training), and generating knowledge for targeted interventions. On the prevention side, ZeroNeet operates in lower and upper secondary schools. In middle schools, through the Tutoring Online Program, it supports students struggling in mathematics, Italian, and English with the help of volunteer university tutors. The introduction of an AI tutor is also being piloted, designed to assist both tutors and tutees and make tutoring sessions more effective. The program also helps teachers provide informed guidance, reducing potential biases and supporting smoother, more conscious educational transitions. In upper secondary schools, the program Azionamenti – Laboratorio di possibilità offers experiential pathways to strengthen class cohesion, support students’ personal and relational growth, develop transversal skills, and enhance self-awareness. A dedicated path is also reserved for teachers to help build positive, trusting relationships. It is also essential to support those already in a NEET condition. On this front, we run Giovani e Lavoro per ZeroNeet, a program offering free online professional training in sectors with workforce demand, guaranteeing initial interviews and concrete employment opportunities. In addition, the ZeroNeet – Reti di opportunità call for proposals, starting in the spring, will fund numerous local projects across Lombardy. Finally, ZeroNeet relies on strong alliances among public, private, and third-sector actors. Through collaboration with Regione Lombardia and Intesa Sanpaolo, it promotes the development of collaborative interventions, working in synergy with institutions and existing local policies, based on the belief that only a cohesive ecosystem can generate real opportunities for growth, inclusion, and the empowerment of new generations.
Anita – L’infanzia Prima intervenes on the interplay between material infrastructures and the cultural imagination surrounding parenthood. How?
LA: According to the Parenthood and Childhood Survey conducted by Evaluation Lab – Fondazione Social Venture Giordano Dell’Amore, today the parenting experience depends on a complex system of material, organizational, and cultural conditions. To address present challenges, Anita – L’infanzia Prima aims to implement targeted actions that provide concrete responses within specific contexts, taking into account local resources and needs. Today, low birth rates on one hand and poverty on the other threaten the sustainability of services and initiatives for children, which are increasingly treated as a private issue. Anita seeks to place the child and childhood at the center, positioning them as a resource recognized and valued by the community and society at large, while also acting on the cultural imagination. The name Anita is intentional. In 1882, the Commissione Centrale di Beneficenza established the Fondo Garibaldi to promote educational services locally, creating one of the longest-lasting funds of what later became Fondazione Cariplo. Referencing that historical experience and linking it to Anita Garibaldi helps valorize the Foundation’s identity while projecting it toward the future. Today, beyond the need for models and resources to activate services as the Fondo Garibaldi did, it is necessary to create spaces for dialogue, co-design, and integration of existing resources that can support territories effectively. Anita acts as a hub of expertise to support educational services, giving value to existing skills and resources. Anita’s actions are developed through collaborative processes with museums and library networks to innovate cultural systems and make them more welcoming to children. Part of the intervention specifically targets families: for vulnerable families, it is crucial to support territorial collaboration networks to identify those most at risk and design interventions that provide access to existing resources or create new solutions through alliances between the third sector, social and educational services, and socio-health services, such as family counseling centers. For families not in vulnerable situations, there is an opportunity for AI to support and guide parents from pregnancy onward. Many new parents struggle to understand which services exist, how to navigate them, and which offerings are relevant to their needs. Fortunately, various social enterprises and public institutions1 are experimenting with personal assistants and dynamic web portals to address this specific need. The aim is to map advanced experiences and support designs that synthesize existing resources with gaps that need to be filled. The analysis of new digital tools is connected to the cultural shift Anita seeks to foster: social media often provide a stereotyped and simplistic representation of childhood, and when parenthood is perceived as a private matter, social platforms reinforce this perception. A different use of digital technology can connect parents to the community, promoting a communal dimension of parenthood by providing accurate information, guiding peer-to-peer dialogue, and connecting families with dedicated professionals. The vision of childhood as a collective good is the foundation of Anita’s work. The upcoming Anita Chiama call for proposals will be a key instrument to stimulate research and innovation, encouraging territories and the scientific community to produce evidence and solutions that recognize attention to childhood as a matter of shared responsibility.
- The recently launched INPS Parenthood Portal is a new initiative ↩︎