Scuola Informale di Cultura Imprenditoriale promoted by Giardino delle Imprese (Fondazione Golinelli) this year brings together 60 ambitious students from 30 different High Schools of the Emilia Romagna region. The learning experience aims to promote an entrepreneurial culture among students, enhancing the individual skills and the initiative spirit in the younger generations. The project offers students a structured path where successful entrepreneurs, academics, scientific experts and tutors will guide them towards developing an innovative business idea.
Each edition focuses on a specific theme. This year, students work on sustainable development, with a particular focus on nutrition and eco-sustainability. The program is structured in four main phases, with an overall duration of six months. The first phase took place at le Serre dei Giardini Margherita and it consisted in a summer camp where students were committed in lessons, group projects and workshops (2 weeks in June and July, one week at the beginning of September). In autumn, student will be occupied with the projects’ implementation and application for funding. The projects will be then evaluated and selected during a public event by a jury of experts (consisting of members of the Eureka Trust and partners of Giardino delle Imprese) and the best projects will be funded. Winning students will be part of a 12-month acceleration period, where the will work to implement and realize the ideas presented, tutored by Giardino delle Imprese.
Within this project, the Future Food Institute contributed during the summer camp phase and met the students to talk about food waste in its different facets. Indeed, our Francesco Castellana showed how the start-ups ecosystem is moving both in preventing and exploiting food waste and how successful business models can be applied in this sector. Instead Tarek Amin presented the problem of food waste from an agricultural and ecological point of view, highlighting sustainable practices and solutions.
With Gianluca Cristallo e Simone Gozzi ( Camst – La Ristorazione Italiana), Giorgio Benassi ( Coop Alleanza 3.0), Francesca Albertazzi ( IGD SIIQ SPA), and Sara Teglia (Impronta Etica) starting from Waste 2 Value the lesson was focused on food waste in all the food-chain, from farm to fork.
The experience then continued on Saturday July 15th with a brilliant hackathon, based on the Expo 2015 Milano insights and the latest reflections developed within the G7 Ambiente 2017.
The students had to reflect on the choices producing a negative ecological impact. In particular, these choices are daily made in food systems and in renewable energies. In a sharing economy society, it is no longer enough focus on a certain value or goal. It is rather necessary to foresee future changes in order to plan appropriate actions, primarily by sharing with society both problems and solutions. The challenge for students is therefore to raise awareness on sustainability and environmental impact, focusing on food systems and renewable energy.
Eight groups hacked the problem in a 10-hours-long work session, a real exercise of creativity useful for the birth of new business ideas. Students’ pitches have been listened carefully and evaluated by an exceptional jury. The difficult task of electing the winner was in the hands of Eugenia Ferrara (Fondazione Golinelli), Andrea Magelli (Youcangroup), Benedetto Linguerri (Local to you), Elisa Petrini (Ethical Impression) and Giorgia Cassovel (Aster). After careful evaluation, the jury memebers awarded group number 6, who presented the project #Rifletti.
Navid Valente, Anna Zanoli, Laura Tartarini, Aurora Vancini, Eleonora Vezzani, Francesco Zuffa and Annas Waheed have designed an experiential event to raise awareness in population. Through installing mirrors in the main Italian squares, people can see their image in the city overwhelmed by the negligence of reducing food and energetic wastes. People, thanks to an easy interaction, can reverse this scenario and switch to a better view of the city and sensitize on how similarly acting in this direction in the real life.
The experience at Scuola Informale di Cultura Imprenditoriale has been inspiring and motivating for all the Future Food team. It is always a pleasure meet such ambitious, enthusiastic and determined people. We wish them all good luck for their future achievements!
