CRITERIA
MESSINA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
Capacity to catalyse SDG localization
The Messina Community Foundation explicitly recognizes its social mission and vocation in its statute, namely, the pursuit of social solidarity purposes and, in particular, to promote people’s rights, freedoms and opportunities, especially for people belonging to vulnerable social categories, and to promote social cohesion, social and solidarity economy. The Foundation acts by promoting community welfare models intertwined with sustainable development approaches aimed at the inclusion in society of those most in need, as well as to enhance and protect the environmental, historical and artistic heritage, and to promote scientific research in the interest of the community. As such, it explicitly and concretely pursues and catalyses all SDGs through territorial and innovative solutions.
Focus on specific vulnerable groups / communities / territories
The Messina Community Foundation explicitly recognizes in its statute the overriding attention it devotes to people belonging to vulnerable social categories and people at risk of social and economic exclusion. The Foundation actively promotes an economic model where vulnerable people are placed at its centre.
Systemic change
The local development strategy pursued by the Messina Community Foundation explicitly aims at overturning dominant paradigms of egoism and self-interest in favour of actively promoting socially innovative and mutually advantageous economic and social approaches and practices. With this objective, the Foundation is carrying out new community welfare models which intertwin with forms of civic and productive economy generating social capital and opportunities for people belonging to vulnerable social groups. The Foundati on brings systemic change by generating, co-generating, re-generating and organizing territorial resources in innovative ways, enhancing the opportunities of the territory and providing new intervention models.
Multi-actor processes and dynamics
As a non-profit organization working for the community welfare, the Foundation actively collaborates and partners with different types of actors ranging from the private sector, the public sector, the third sector and pastoral organizations. In fact, the founders, co-founders, partners and statutory partners of the Foundation belong to all these different sectors. The Foundation stakeholders range from state and local public administration entities and institutions, clerical institutions, third sector organisati ons, cultural organizations, other financial institutions and foundations, universities and training centres, international networks. The collaboration among different actors is an important feature for long-lasting interventions, since it allows to take into consideration different perspectives, needs and interests in tackling specific issues. Moreover, the cocreation among different actors usually increases the ownership and the embeddedness of a process, creating a favourable environment that will allow its sustainability.
Multi-level territorial processes and dynamics
The Community Foundation interacts with multi-level stakeholders ranging from the local level, the municipality, up to the Italian ministerial level. Moreover, the Foundation carries out numerous technical and scientific collaborations with international universities and research centres. Its founding members also contributed to the creation of REVES, a European network of local and regional authorities and social economy organisations working to develop the social economy sector. It is also member of the European network of social and ethical finance institutions (FEBEA) and the F20, a network of more than 60 foundations and philanthropic organizations from different parts of the world, calling for joint, transnational action towards sustainable development.
Institutionalization
The local development strategy pursued by this case study has gone beyond a citizen movement, a philanthropic practice or a voluntary practice. Instead, it has ta ken the form of a Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization which catalyses local and territorial resources to support practices and projects improving the life of the community on a stable and continuous basis.
Social/transformative resilience
The Community Foundation’s role in fostering and enhancing local social and economic opportunities by favouring social cohesion and social inclusion contributes to support the community in acquiring social and transformative resilience. Moreover, internally engaging with and drawing from various sectors and resources (e.g., technology and scientific research, health, renewable energies, productive economies, urban regeneration, education, environmental protection, artistic and cultural heritage, participative democracy and legality and many more) allows the Foundation to provide multi-dimensional responses to complex social and environmental issues. It also allows the Foundation to have a deeper understanding of its territory and to quickly intercept changes happening in its territorial context and, hence, to be flexible enough to promptly intervene with adaptable responses.
Potential replicability
The experience of the Messina Community Foundation and its model show a great degree of potential to be replicated in other contexts even though its origin and scope of intervention is deeply embedded in its own territory. In fact, the Community Foundation model is quite recent in the Italian context and was imported by the United States where, since the beginning of the 20th century, it has been playing an important role and growing in number. Moreover, as for its multi-stakeholder and pluralistic nature, the community foundation offers a flexible and adaptable model for different territories and their governance. Source: Authors
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