(Finance) – The voices that represent the world of the social met today in a meeting organized in Rome from UniCredit on the topic “Social economy for the development of territories“, to discuss effective ways to support the Italian Third Sector. For UniCredit it was also an opportunity to reaffirm the Bank’s commitment to social issues in Italy, to help the Third Sector offer development opportunities to people and their communities and to promote the growth of their territories.
The Third sector Italian is made up of 360 thousand institutions, 4.6 million volunteers and over 870 thousand employees. Due to the variety of shapes, sizes and objectives of the sector, it presents a range of different needs, including financial ones, which require different types of support to be satisfied.
While this means that there is no simple solution to support all Third Sector realities, UniCredit remains committed to promoting synergy, cooperation and co-planning between the Third Sector and the financein order to strengthen a continuously expanding sector, which plays a vital role in Italy and around the world and also has significant implications on national employment.
The meeting was opened by Roberto FlorinsRegional Manager Central Italy of UniCredit, and saw the presentation by Mario Calderini, Professor of the School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milan on the new social economy that involves the third sector in supporting communities and the speech by Stefano Gallo, Head of Territorial Development of UniCredit on the ways in which UniCredit supports the Third Sector.
The initiative was enriched by one panel discussion on “Projects, solutions and active participation tools for communities” which saw Giuseppe Toro, President?AIL Nazionale, Don Marco Pagniello, Director of Caritas Italiana, Stefano Carmenati, Administrator of the Community of S. Egidio, Andrea Varotti, member of the Board of Directors of ASSIF (Italian Fundraiser Association) and Elisa Ercoli, President of Differenza APS woman.
“As a bank, UniCredit believes it has a responsibility that goes far beyond financing,” he said Stephen Rooster, Head of Territorial Development at UniCredit. “We have always paid close attention to the needs of communities. The purpose of our Bank is to enable communities to progress and we are proud to do this and to support the Third Sector, which shares this objective with us, to achieve our purpose. Last year in our markets we have provided 36.5 million to support communities. We are pleased that this commitment has recently been recognized by MSCI, which raised UniCredit’s ESG rating to ‘AA’ in recognition of our commitment to social issues.”
“The great challenge is to put the Third Sector in a position to be more efficient, to grow and to respond to problems in a more structured way”, he stated Mario Calderini, Professor of the School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milan. “In this way the Third Sector can play an active role in the economy and politics at both a national and European level. One way to achieve this is through technology, which can help promote opportunities for growth and development.”
“To manage the specific needs of this sector, UniCredit has long had a specialist consultancy centre, made up of sector experts and the Non-Profit Branch. It is the only branch of its kind in Italy, based in Rome”, he said. Gallo concluded. “We want to extend this successful model nationally, further strengthening specialization and investing in the skills of our colleagues.”