CAPACITYES Journal 1: get an update on Bergamo's project

Urban poverty is one the most crucial problem affecting Italian cities, particularly since the economic crisis of 2008 resulting in a drastic reduction of resources.  Bergamo, with its 121,000 inhabitants, is not excluded from this situation, showing an average of 11,4% of families living in poverty condition, a percentage that skyrockets to 57% when considering foreigner families. 
From this scenario comes CAPACITyES project which addresses urban poverty mainly focusing on children educational poverty. 
The challenge is to disrupt the mechanisms underlying urban poverty and the resulting inequalities through an innovative approach focused on children perspective. Studies indeed show that children are the most vulnerable age group when considering the at-risk-of-poverty-and-social-exclusion rate. CAPACITyES will work on the children helping to break the cycle of poverty tackling disadvantage in early years in order to reduce the risk of poverty and social exclusion in the future. 

The CAPACITyES project intends to address urban educational poverty in a multiple perspective, taking into account different dimensions: housing, education, art, sport and culture, through active participation and inclusion of the citizens. 
The interconnected solutions are as follow:

• A Co-Housing facility for families with children with personal and shared spaces to live in. Their presence will be temporary and aimed at supporting them in dealing with housing difficulties, staying on the labor market and exercising full autonomy;
•  a creative HubForKids that will be focused on improving children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills, proposing artistic, sport, music and cultural activities, and performances targeted for different age groups. Children will also benefit from scholarships, as an economic help;
• site specific Artistic Installations to be located inside the Co-Housing building, the HubforKids and in different city spots becoming a single huge site-specific installation aimed at connecting the centre and the suburbs, by facilitating their cross-contamination. 

The project aims to achieve the following results:

• Sustainable temporary co-housing solutions, mitigating the situation of fragility and segregation of parts of the families waiting for social housing; 
• Empowerment and social inclusion through participative and active involvement of beneficiaries;
• Enhanced vulnerable families future income capacity and job opportunities through courses and professional training;
• New recreational spaces dedicated to children and young people, where different cultural, sports, musical  and artistic offers can be lever to their full exercise of the right to culture;
• Reshaped urban landscape of selected deprived areas using art for a new idea of relationship with public space. 

The project partnership is made up of these territorial actors:

• Municipality of Bergamo
•  Social Cooperative RUAH - cooperative
• Social Cooperative Patronato San Vincenzo - cooperative
• Generations FA Cooperative - cooperative
• Professional Training Association PSV
• BEST Institut - private training centre
• ISMU - Foundation for Initiatives and Studies on multi ethnicity - private organisation
• CSI - Italian Sporting Center of Bergamo - private organisation
• PURELAB  - private enterprise