Focus on social agriculture as a winning model to prevent and combat the phenomenon of illegal hiring, stem agromafies and promote virtuous processes of inclusion and socio-working re-insertion of migrants, through the creation and strengthening of a national network of multisectoral collaborations and integrated between the agricultural world, social and health services, training and hospitality sectors. This is the general objective of the Rural Social ACT project of Cia-Agricoltori Italiani.
“We promote virtuous models and loyal practices that do not involve any type of exploitation, favoring the strengthening of social agriculture as a model of sustainable and ethical territorial development” explains Corrado Franci, the national coordinator of the project.
Rural Social ACT will be activated in 12 regions of the Center-North (Valle d’Aosta, Liguria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, Lazio) and 17 will be the territorial areas in which the mobile units will be set up, which will act together with the information desks of the CIA, to favor the emergence and taking care of people in conditions of labor exploitation, offering support and advice to the victims of illegal hiring, thanks to a multidisciplinary team (linguistic-cultural mediator, territorial development agent, social operator). Therefore, training courses for operators and mediators are foreseen, with the updating of skills on the subject, and employability workshops for migrants, increasing knowledge in the agricultural field and consolidating good practices of social agriculture.
There should be 240 migrants involved in the project directly and a thousand indirectly, 150 agricultural enterprises engaged in the territories and 100,000 people reached with the collaboration network between the partners, who were chosen precisely for their ability to be transversal and complementary in terms of skills and knowledge. «The added value of this project lies in three fundamental aspects – added the CIA director general, Claudia Merlino -. First of all the method, developing a multifunctional and multistakeholder approach, which is essential to obtain results in this field. The second aspect is the timing, that is to say one year, which requires concrete actions and incentives. The third aspect is the objective of the project, that is the contrast to the phenomenon of illegal hiring, which is done by supporting the workers but also the healthy farms, which are the majority, and which every day take on a part of social responsibility guaranteeing a job fair and dignified, despite the complex context, marked by an exponential increase in the prices of raw materials, unfair competition, the effects of climate change ».