The fifth edition of the Investing for Good Lab, Italiacamp’s educational workshop at Luiss Guido Carli – which this year includes the collaboration of Invitalia, the National Agency for Development – kicked off with the first lesson on 24 September.

Active since 2018, it offers students a concrete experience on social impact policies and finance, through the sharing of tools and methodologies of impact management and evaluation. It is open to students of the three-year degree courses of the Departments of Business and Management, Economics and Finance, Political Science and the single-cycle degree course in Law.

Enrolled students will have the opportunity to be tutored by two Invitalia professionals with extensive experience in business evaluation, and during the ten lessons they will be able to go through the development phases of an impact finance investment by working in teams on real cases: start-ups selected by Italiacamp and Invitalia because their activities, in addition to an economic return, generate positive social, environmental and cultural impacts. 

The startups selected for this edition of the workshop are:

• Artknit: high quality, democratic tailoring products under the banner of innovation and sustainability, made by leveraging the Italian small business ecosystem and digital.
• Cubbit: private, secure and eco-sustainable cloud storage; it allows users to have control over their files, while reducing CO2 emissions.
• Latitudo 40: simplifies access to data from space through image analysis and AI for smart city monitoring and precision agriculture.
• Wiseair: an air quality monitoring platform to make citizens aware and guide administrations in policy making.

The first lesson featured the testimony of Riesco, a social cooperative based in the Veneto region which, through the work of 108 employees, 32% of whom have a mental disability, combines productivity and inclusion by supplying 2200 meals a day to around ninety company canteens.