Officine Mezzogiorno is one of the 18 projects – among the 79 presented from all over Italy – accessing the operational experimentation of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF): EUR 450,000 to fight social exclusion and school drop-out. The Officine Mezzogiorno project was developed by the Municipality of Lecce together with Italiacamp in collaboration with the local association The Qube.

In this second phase, experimentation will be carried out to verify the effectiveness of the project idea and its sustainability and replicability on-site, through the use of indicators that will measure and evaluate the results achieved and the social impact of the project. The SIINC (Social Impact Incentives), an impact finance tool – newly adopted in Italy – that links the remuneration of the implementing party to the achievement of results verified by an independent evaluator, is connected to these indicators.

The Social Innovation Fund, managed by the Department of Public Administration of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, aims to strengthen the capacity of public administrations to implement social innovation actions, developing a process capable of combining social and financial results and based on a virtuous interaction between public and private actors.

As per the Italiacamp CEO Fabrizio Sammarco, “Social impact is the compass orienting Italiacamp’s activities, which is why Officine Mezzogiorno was born first as a content and only later as a container. In this experimental phase of Officine Mezzogiorno, we are continuing to work to meet the social needs of the area and thus access the third phase of consolidation, in order to expand and replicate the project, creating a positive impact for an area with enormous potential whose social capital we want to help preserve.”

Access to the third phase of the SIF will contribute to the creation of the Officine Mezzogiorno hub, the result of the regeneration of the bus workshop in front of Lecce train station. The space, a place of social innovation, will host training activities dedicated to the area’s young and very young people and market accompaniment for start-up companies.