Any entity, institution, or body working on a territory faces a crucial question in carrying out its activities, namely, how to engage the community of that territory. How to make it not only informed, but an active participant in the decisions, practices or policies it intends to implement.
Involving people in the decisions that are made centrally increases the accountability of the decision maker, and if those in the community are involved and share the choices, they will be less likely to oppose the decision maker, reducing the likelihood of social tensions arising.
On a more local level, in the neighborhood for example, feeling part of a community, feeling a sense of belonging, fuels people’s propensity to actively engage in making a contribution, to improve it. They feel the bond of trust between them as a function of the common good that incentivizes their active participation.
While civic involvement is perhaps to be attributed more to the sphere of institutions and to be coupled with the concept of democracy, community involvement finds its place more in solidarity and is attributable to the world of civil society.
Community foundations undoubtedly belong to this scenario.
Community foundations, all of which are different from each other and respond to a model that we might call “variable geometry,” nevertheless have common characteristics: a long-term approach and vision, certain assets, a broad mission, governance composed of different stakeholders, and a territory to refer to.
Unlike other foundations, for community foundations, the involvement of the community is crucial, because that is where the ideas, the resources come from, not only from an economic and financial point of view, but more importantly from the point of view of relationships, capabilities, that is, what we call the continuum of capital. Moreover, just as important, from the involvement of the community itself come requests for answers and solutions in the management of problems and situations, to which follows the definition of priorities, and thus also the definition of strategic lines and activities that result, thus, outlined by the community that will benefit from them.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT BY COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS
But how to get to the community? How to make her an active participant in decisions, project proposals, and activities in general?
The longest-running community foundations have a long track record of initiatives put in place to engage the community, and can offer us examples of the process and also various tools.
In Italy, the Lecco Community Foundation was the first community foundation established, it was 1999. Since then, it has developed many ways to engage the target community, including community funds, which are dedicated funds, desired and financed by the local area or portions of it for a specific purpose, but administered by the foundation. This is an extremely concrete way to listen to and engage the community and support them in achieving their goal.
In the South then, where historically social ties play as important a role as ever, where the state is perceived to be absent and it is social relations that play a decisive role, community foundations can play a crucial role.
The Messina Community Foundation, for example, has revived the fortunes of the famous Messina Brewery, closed in 2013 due to an attempt at building speculation, supporting a major fundraising and helping to carry out a communication campaign in the area, drafting the business plan and building the network of financial partners from both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, which enabled 15 master brewers to form a cooperative in 2014 to start again with a new production, handing down the ancient tradition of brewing beer in their town, and not losing their jobs.
Fondazione di Comunità San Gennaro in Naples has been the most effective tool that the La Paranza cooperative has strongly desired and used to make the most of the main asset around which it has developed, the Catacombs of San Gennaro in the Sanità District. The cooperative provided an opportunity for young people from a particularly difficult neighborhood, Sanità, to become the Catacombs’ tour guides, professionals trained to provide tours in both Italian and English. The number of visitors in 10 years has increased overwhelmingly, from 5,000 to 150,000, creating a previously unimaginable inducement in the neighborhood in terms of receptivity and related activities, guaranteed by the credibility built over time by the San Gennaro Community Foundation.
The role played by community foundations during the pandemic, when they became the focal point not only of the community but also of local institutions, cannot be ignored. This is the case with the Brescian Community Foundation, which found itself playing a central role in the procurement and distribution of personal protective equipment and in taking care of the fragile population during the hardest phase of the pandemic, in a city like Brescia, among the hardest hit in Italy. The City of Brescia recognized that the agility with which the foundation was able to move and the skills it could bring to bear, especially because of its deep knowledge of the area, made it a more effective actor in handling the emergency than the public agencies themselves could be.
YOUTH INVOLVEMENT
An equally crucial problem of various agencies and institutions, as well as foundations, is knowing how to attract young people, those who grow up in the community and can contribute to the community’s well-being and development with innovative ideas and skills.
We can identify three levels of youth involvement: inform, involve, implicate.
To inform them means to make them aware of what you autonomously decided to do, so no sign of receiving the information or feedback is required.
Involving them means informing young people, but listening to their opinions and incorporating them into the decisions to be made.
Implicating them means making them an integral and active part of the decision-making and management process.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning a really interesting recent experience, which started from young people to impart change in our country’s Public Administration, starting from the opportunity generated by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. It is Officine Italia, an association of young professionals whose mission is to bring the instances of young people to the center of political dialogue and decision-making processes, providing spaces, channels, tools and opportunities for aggregation and confrontation with the decision makers of today and tomorrow, starting from values such as social sustainability, talent enhancement, equal rights and opportunities, participation and civic entrepreneurship.
One of the most interesting conclusions of the study, which involves foundations as diverse in mission and size, is that there is no justification for not opening up to youth participation, because this openness benefits the foundations themselves and society as a whole.
CONCLUSIONS
Dropping proposals and solutions from above is likely to fail, while it is crucial to inform, involve, and implicate the community. This is all the more true for community foundations, which are by their very nature anchored in the community to which they relate.
In particular, space should be given to young people, they should be given a chance to express themselves, to share ideas, not trivializing their role because of their young age. Youth Bank, Universal Civil Service, Officine Italia, and the Youth Advisory Board are all examples where it is shown that if given the chance, young people can and do play a key role in communities. After all, they live with and suffer the consequences of the countless crises of our time, from climate change to wars, from pandemics to the enormous social challenges we face.
The issue of intergenerational justice cannot be addressed without calling into question those who will inherit what we have built so far. They need to be given the opportunity to play an active role, to be protagonists of change, to be changemakers, and have the humility to learn from them, to welcome a new vision.
