Pistoia: the first Italian Social Business City

On 11 July Pistoia will be awarded as first Italian Social Business City. The Social Business City Program started at the beginning of this year to promote social business in the Pistoia territory. It is a triennial program which is the result of an agreement with the Yunus Social Business Centre University of Florence (YSBCUF), Fondazione Un Raggio di Luce Onlus and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia.

 

The Program will be officially celebrated in the presence of local and national authorities and of Nobel Peace Prize Professor Muhammad Yunus himself, who will personally present the plaque of Social Business City to the mayor of Pistoia.

 

Professor Yunus is the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, a bank created in 1983 in order to lend very small loans (known as microcredit) to people otherwise excluded from traditional credit system. Twenty-three years later, in 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for their work in eradicating poverty. Professor Yunus is the director of Yunus Centre in Dhaka, established in 2008.

 

Becoming a Social Business City means to choose the tools offered by Social Business to address local issues and community needs. The main issues local governments have to face, such as youth employment, elderly assistance, environmental protection, can now be managed with Social Business solutions, that is companies that combine profit objectives with social utility.

 

The three-year program developed by YSBCUF for Pistoia includes training activities and workshop for students; consulting services for entrepreneurs; technical and financial assistance for the start up of social enterprises; activities for the involvement of Third Sector organizations. These activities will allow citizens, entrepreneurs and representatives of the Pistoia territory to come in contact with international institutions that are already dealing with these issues.

 

The event will be an important opportunity to discuss, together with Professor Yunus, the local authorities and the scientific referees of the program, about the prospects for the territory and, more generally, the importance of this experience as a valid alternative to traditional economic models.

 

To read more: http://sbflorence.org/en/un-nuovo-inizio/