Problem addressed

The ‘Here, a neighbourhood to grow’ programme promoted by Save the Children Italy aims at transforming five Italian neighbourhoods that suffer from conditions of degradation and marginalisation, making them places where growth opportunities are guaranteed for all the children and adolescents who live there. Ostia Ponente in Rome, Zen 2 in Palermo, Pianura in Naples, Macrolotto Zero in Prato and Porta Palazzo-Aurora in Turin are five places characterised by inequalities and a condition of social exclusion, but where at the same time it is possible to think of a relaunch and transformation plan as they are rich in resources and where aspirations and investment opportunities can be unleashed.

Every neighbourhood is affected by a multitude of issues that undermine social development and well-being. These include the lack of adequate spaces for growth and free services for children and adolescents such as public libraries, theatres, cinemas, schools, parks; along with rising unemployment and high school drop-out rates.

The children and young people who live in these places risk remaining in a condition of extreme marginality. On the contrary, they must be guaranteed the possibility of participating in a conscious manner, becoming protagonists of their own lives and of the territory in which they grow up. For this reason, all the actions promoted by the Development Plan for the rights of children and adolescents will have as their objectives:

• Fostering in children and young people the full awareness of being agents of sustainable environmental change;
• Encourage the active participation of children and adolescents in awareness-raising, civic volunteering and activism, in an inclusive and non-discriminatory manner, with special attention to the involvement of children from the most marginalised backgrounds;
• Increasing awareness of the public good and its care as the heritage of each and all;
• Enable young people to actively participate in training and information paths where they can express opinions in a constructive, dialogic manner and oriented towards building critical thinking;
• Increasing knowledge and skills on the topics of sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, promoting a culture of peace and non-violence, combating mafias, global citizenship;
• Promoting paths of inclusion of minors in the penal circuit or in conflict with the law by facilitating their reintegration and counteracting any stigma;
• Facilitating confrontation paths regarding the narration of contexts to counter stigma and social stereotypes.

Innovative solution

The programme at the national level has the ambitious goal of guaranteeing all children and adolescents the best opportunities for growth in terms of the right to health and the environment, the fight against poverty, the dissemination of quality educational opportunities, protagonism and active citizenship. Indeed, even today, the territory in which a child is born determines their growth trajectory. It is necessary to rethink and redesign the contexts, enhancing the existing resources and intervening in a structured manner in the areas of greatest distress and fragility.

‘Here, a neighbourhood to grow’ is a 10-year long-term challenge for the construction of an intervention model based on the active participation of the territory and for a planning and programming system capable of overcoming the fragmentation of actions, of integrating social policies with educational, environmental, urban and economic ones by merging national policy with territorial policy, of opening up to social innovations, and of placing the rights of children and adolescents at the centre.

‘Here, a neighbourhood to grow’ is based on two principles:

• The change process must be dynamic, designed together by community members and based on common goals and shared activities;
• The definition of interventions looks at the life course of the child from birth to the construction of full independence, touching on every sphere and dimension of their life.

The transformative actions to be implemented are defined, in a participatory manner, within the Development Plan for the rights of children and adolescents, constructed in a shared manner and based on an analysis of the needs of children and adolescents, the resources required, and the commitments made by all the actors for their implementation. This approach allows the construction of win-win alliances between different subjects, representing an opportunity for the landing of public and private funds, and it is built through foresight methods.

The project adopts several innovative solutions, such as multi-stakeholder co-designing and territorial advocacy processes. The programme interventions to be implemented in the field are defined through a co-programming and co-designing process, based on the participation of the territorial community and on the protagonism of the young people who constitute a Standing Committee, with the aim of sharing and discussing their needs, accompanying and guiding - where possible - the implementation of the Development Plan, taking an active part in territorial meetings.

Another innovative feature concerns the multi-dimensional approach to the child’s life. The Plan’s objectives are aggregated according to certain fundamental rights of children to which they refer:

• Right to education: each child and adolescent has continuous access to inclusive and quality education and education services on the territory;
• Right to health and psychophysical well-being: every child and adolescent has access to quality health services in the territory and grows up in an environment able to take care of their needs throughout their development;
• Right to the environment and sustainable mobility: ensuring a healthy, child-friendly growing environment and promoting environmental protection and biodiversity also in the interest of future generations;
• Fighting material and educational poverty: each child and adolescent has the resources they need to grow and build their pathways to autonomy.

Key results and benefits

Among the key results we can include the drafting of the Development Plan for the rights of children and adolescents, a working document co-constructed with the various actors in the area (institutions, civic organisations, schools, associations, social services, educational and cultural realities, educators and teachers, doctors, the City Council, social and health workers, researchers, volunteers, etc.) and with the participation of the young people of the Standing Committee.

The establishment of the Standing Committee is another important key result, since it promotes the active participation of young people in the analysis and planning development. The Standing Committee is an active interlocutor in defining and planning the actions of the territorial Development Plan. The main objective is to ensure the protagonism and active participation of the young people of the territory and enable them to become agents of change in the community in which they live. The Standing Committee is the central body and driver of change through a process of identifying problems and resources and the presentation of proposals for action and their implementation included in the Development Plan.

The Development Plan is a compass for orienting social, environmental, educational, youth policies and the concrete interventions connected to them, to guarantee each child and adolescent the best opportunities for growth in the context in which they live. Based on a collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, the Plan sets long and medium-term objectives regarding the right to quality education, health and psycho-physical wellbeing, the fight against material and educational poverty, and the environment and care for places. The commitments and actions indicated are an expression of the needs that have emerged, and the proposals gathered from the territory and are intended to enhance local resources, activating virtuous processes of growth and collaboration. The success and effectiveness of the Plan will be determined by the active involvement of all the actors, and the results will therefore be the result of a collaborative effort. In this sense, territorial reinforcement and co-design constitute further key results that are identified in an empowerment of the community in which the project is developed.

The Development Plan starts from an analysis of the area based on the rights of children and adolescents and sets structural change objectives to make the area ‘a neighbourhood to grow up’ rich in opportunities for all. The Development Plan aims at contributing to the achievement of the following macro-objectives of change, in close contact with the local authorities and the third sector active in the area:

• Young people born in the neighbourhood have the best possible start in life from the point of view of care and the social and educational dimension;
• New parents living in the neighbourhood can rely on a welfare network that continuously supports them in bringing up their children and that responds to the real needs of families by also facilitating their stay in the area on an ongoing basis;
• Children and adolescents with a migrant background can enjoy an inclusive living environment and are guaranteed access to education and school integration;
• Children, girls and adolescents living in the neighbourhood have the same educational opportunities as their peers living in other areas of the country, overcoming the inequalities that exist today;
• Every child and adolescent living in the neighbourhood is confident that they can fulfil their full potential in education, training and employment and can actively participate in the development of their community;
• There is an integrated, efficient and quality local neighbourhood welfare system in the neighbourhood;
• The neighbourhood offers redeveloped public spaces for use by citizens, enhances its environmental resources and promotes sustainable mobility.

Programmatic interventions concern the activation and/or enhancement of services (e.g. new service for early childhood), networks (e.g. definition of community educational pact), the regeneration and/or redevelopment of spaces (e.g. recovery of disused or decaying areas) and community empowerment in terms of both active citizenship and the strengthening of skills (e.g. pathways of conscious participation, citizenship school, awareness-raising in access to digital training).

In order to inform neighbourhood residents, local associations and other actors about the developments of the programme and to enable them to join the Development Plan, the platform ‘Here, a neighbourhood to grow’ (https://quiunquartierepercrescere.it/) was created. In addition, Save the Children Italy launched a petition to ensure that children living in urban peripheries can benefit from quality education, sports activities, and safe spaces to grow and let their talents flourish. The Periferie Italia Petition (https://www.savethechildren.it/petizioneperiferieitalia) aims at demanding that schools be open all day and that gyms and libraries be available in all suburbs. To date, the petition has been signed by more than 30,000 people.

Potential for mainstreaming

The model ‘Qui, un quartiere per crescere’ is highly scalable and has the potential to be transferred to other Italian and also European contexts, since it is already a structural approach and not only a project-based activity. Indeed, this particular model could be applied to other areas following the examples set by the existing neighbourhoods. The Development Plans offer a replicable template or general guidance on the macro-objectives that should be set and the rights that should drive the process. The territorial assemblies develop, present and monitor the Plan, highlighting a widespread system that involves the local communities and the institutions with which we have framework agreements.

Moreover, the impact assessment is guided and carried out by ARCO – Action Research for Co Development. Based on a longitudinal analysis, the objective of the evaluation is to measure the impact achieved on two levels of intervention and change:

• The change achieved directly in the lives of children and young people, thanks to the activation and/or strengthening of interventions that affect different areas of life;
• The change achieved in the territory in terms of increasing social capital and building alliances (increasing co-planning, local skills - capacity building -, injecting resources, networking, economic activation of the territory, etc.).

The young people, with the guidance of the evaluators, will also be the protagonists of a research conducted directly by them. The evaluation will be enriched by data taken from the monitoring of the actions carried out which are collected in a dedicated platform. This approach will allow us to have a picture of the impact of the program in each territory, divided into different commitments, in order to be able to define a replicable, scalable and sustainable intervention model.

Social innovation places itself at the service of the rights of children and adolescents and becomes an incubator of ideas and proposals to bring about a courageous and cohesive transformative process that calls on institutions, the private social world, associations, educational agencies, and territorial communities to take on concrete commitments to redesign living contexts.

Social Innovation Neighbourhoods, therefore, are places that take up the challenge of change for the economic, social, cultural and environmental wellbeing of children and the community, and that equip themselves with an ambitious and shared intervention plan. Thanks to its composition, the program aims at laying the foundations for the construction of an intervention model in the suburbs capable of adapting to specific contexts.