Non profit
Italy: Social cooperatives fight the Mafia
The legal mozzarella. One of southern Italy’s best known symbols – the Mafia – now has a new enemy it had better watch out for: buffalo mozzarella.
di Staff
The lands confiscated from the Casalesi clan will in fact now become the sight of an innovative social enterprise that will make the “world’s tastiest mozzarella”, as well as bring new life to lands once used to fund criminal operations.
The enterprise, which in Italy will be formally recognized as a type B social cooperative, one that will not only produce profitably but also promote reinsertion to the workplace of excluded and marginalized individuals as well as being an open farm for local schools.
From beginning to end the process behind the production of the cooperative’s buffalo mozzarella will aim to be both environmentally friendly and sustainable, embracing innovative techniques, renewable energy and biogas.
With the name Libera Terra, this social enterprise strikes straight to the heart of an issue that in Casal del Principe, Campania, is not an easy one to tackle. Fifteen years ago a priest called don Peppe Diana was killed for his work exposing the local Mafia. Libera Terra is dedicated to him and to his struggle and is supported by the Fondazione per il Sud and by Unipol, which has raised over 432 thousand euros for anti-Mafia projects in Sicily, Calabria, Puglia and Campania.
To find out more:
Naples, 20th March Unipol will hold a seminar dedicated to the issue of confiscated Mafia lands.
