Business and sustainability are sides of the same coin, profit and social responsibility are allies and not enemies: the Golinelli Foundation which, starting from Monday, will inaugurate the third edition of the Business Garden, aimed at 60 high school adolescents from Emilia-Romagna and dedicated to the themes of services for the well-being of citizens, environmental safety and eco-sustainability. Indeed, becoming an entrepreneur means inventing products, making money, but also responding to the needs of society
Contemporary. “Businesses – he explains Antonio Danieli, director of the Foundation – must primarily produce economic value e
contextually environmental and social value". Thus begins an edition of this business school for very young people with a strong ethical imprint, as the founder Marino Golinelli has always wanted.
“Since the beginning – adds Danieli – we have tried to keep different values together; it is a turning point from which there is no turning back. The concept of
social responsibility has obviously evolved over time and we have with him. Above all in the United States there is increasing talk of benefit corporations, but even in Italy today there is a reference regulatory framework for this type of company. It's important for us that the kids become aware of it."
A benefit company "reconstructs the rift between the state and the market", while the economy broadens its horizons, to include values such as knowledge, happiness, smart working. “We are a Foundation that looks far ahead – adds the general manager – and we continually ask ourselves what development means”.
The 2016 edition of the Business Garden takes advantage of the collaboration with the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change and the University of Bologna and offers young people a large amount of open data, freely accessible, made available by the European Community and the scientific community. The school is divided into 4 main phases: a two-week summer camp in June and July and one in early September, a project development period in the autumn months, the funding of the most deserving projects and a subsequent acceleration path for ideas funded. The best proposals will obtain between 8 and 15 euros, to pass from the idea to the concrete prototype, through inclusion in the accelerator of the Garden itself.
“The Euro-Mediterranean Center – explains Danieli – is one of the leading research bodies on climate change. Study the oceans and atmospheres, currents and temperatures, the impact of pollution on the atmosphere and our students will have the opportunity to enter this fascinating world to then give free rein to their creativity and invent products, services, apps useful teaching tools for the community. Just to give an example, think of something that already exists like an app for weather and sea forecasts when you have to take the ferry”. The 2016 edition hasn't started yet, but the Foundation is already working on 2017: "We will increase the resources both for the Garden and for Icaro, the section for university students and we are thinking of developing the trend of creative enterprises, giving space to art and culture".
