WHAT WE DO

Supporting the occupational activation of women and young people and promoting social cohesion in the San Siro district.

FOR WHOM AND WHERE

Women and young people in the San Siro district of Milan.

OBJECTIVES

The San Siro district, the ‘quadrilateral’, is today one of the most analysed and studied contexts by Italian social scientists and it is over-represented in the local and national media. With more than 11,000 official residents, 56% of whom have foreign origins, 84 different nationalities with a clear prevalence of North African ones (67.2%), a housing allocation that privileges individuals and families in a situation of fragility, about 600 mentally ill persons surveyed by the CPS of zone 7, San Siro is today, to all intents and purposes, a sort of ‘marginality incubator‘.

Women of foreign origin, with whom Soleterre has been working since 2020, elude the network of services and are extremely difficult to intercept and involve. Invisibility is a concept that also applies well to the neighbourhood’s young people: early school drop-outs, unemployment, housing decay, poverty, lack of aggregation spaces have created a “social bomb” that has made the headlines for episodes of urban guerrilla warfare.

The “WORK IS PROGRESS – SAN SIRO” project intends to promote social cohesion in the San Siro district through the socio-economic inclusion of vulnerable people, by providing job counselling, training activities, and matching accompaniment, as well as moments of exchange. In addition, the intervention envisages the promotion of opportunities for encounter between the different souls of the area, in order to defuse the dynamics of conflict that currently lacerate the social fabric.