Donna Moderna and the Vodafone Foundation Italy presented in Rome, at the Auditorium dell’Ara Pacis, the winners of the “Women & Work Project”, for the best ideas for women’s social enterprise with total prize money of €300,000.

The winners
The initiative by Donna Moderna and the Vodafone Foundation Italy attracted entries from a great number of women who put together hundreds of projects for the creation of various forms of women’s social enterprise.
The rules of the competition laid out three main areas of interest:

– Home & Work. Getting better organised for ideas for the improved management and conciliation of professional and family demands in women’s daily lives;

– Solidarity. Lending a hand for the elaboration of proposals aimed at getting more women who have been subjected to abuse or live in difficult situations into work.

– Web. Let’s get online for web projects or those involving telecommunications and aimed at providing incentives for female employment.

The selection was made on the basis of over 270 projects submitted, of which 50% were dedicated to the conciliation of home and work.
Among the many projects received, special attention was given to issues of environmental sustainability and the creation of forms of aggregation to put women in contact with each other on the basis of common interests.

The best projects in each of the three categories were awarded with the sum of €100,000.

Emma Bonino, Federica Guidi and Barbara Palombelli awarded the prizes to the three winning projects:

1) “Pratice the future” (San Giuliano Milanese – MI)
In the Home & Work section, the stand-out project was “Practice the future”, characterised by its focus on environmental sustainability and the different needs of women in the home.
The proposal was created with the objective of consolidating and structuring a range of services for children (summer camps, after school, open days for private bodies and schools) in the context of the activities of the association Cascina Santa Brera, with activities aimed at working mothers that place particular attention on healthy and eco-sustainable living.

2)“ Baby-lab Coop” (San Sebastiano al Vesuvio – NA)
The winner in the Solidarity section was “Baby-lad Coop”, a project that “aims to help women in difficulty into work. The proposal is based on the creation of a strong network of partnerships across the Naples area. The objective is to establish a social cooperative of women made up of the three proposing members and a number of volunteers, together with ex-prisoners who, following initial training and a process of selection, will be able to contribute to the management of social activities comprising laboratories for children (after-school and pre-school) and parents-children.

3) “Womenpride” (Turin / Lecce)
The prize in the Web section went to “Womenpride”, which was able to combine the use of web technologies with the needs of women to combine work and family. The project involves the creation of a web platform that can offer women with children the possibility of conciliating work and family and to create opportunities for to bring women together online, creating groups that share interest and hobbies.

During the award ceremony there was also a debate on the theme of “Women’s social enterprise: a possible dream”. Taking part in the discussion were: Senator Emma Bonino, deputy speaker of the Italian Senate; Federica Guidi, President of young entrepreneurs of the Italian federation of industry; the journalist Barbara Palombelli; the Hon. Alessia Mosca, Secretary of the Labour Commission of the Chamber of Deputies.
The accent during the meeting was on the need to increase the involvement of women in the workplace in a country where the female unemployment rate is still stuck at 46.4% (Source: ISTAT).