Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Among the actions envisaged by the winning project 'Wish Mi' is a digital platform that brings together all services for minors and 7 physical hubs
 
Milan, January 4 2020 - A city suitable for children, girls and boys, where all minors have easier access to services dedicated to them and to education. These are some of the objectives of Wish Mi (Wellbeing integrated System of Milan), the project that won funding of around 5 million euros thanks to the European "Urban innovative actions" (Uia) tender, being among the 20 selected out of over 175 proposals received from local authorities in 23 European Union member states. The project sees the Municipality of Milan, with the Education and Social Policies directions, as the leader. The Administration then identified, through a public notice, the partner entities: Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, ActionAid, Research Center on Intercultural Relations of the Catholic University of Milan, Department of Design of the Polytechnic of Milan, ABCittà cooperative. The project was finalized with the support of Bloomberg Associates and will operate in synergy with WeMi, the digital (wemi.milano.it) and physical (Spazi WeMi) system of the Municipality of Milan to facilitate access to the city's home services , and with Qubì, the Cariplo Foundation program to combat child poverty in Milan.
 
“Children and young people - declares Education Councilor Laura Galimberti - represent the future of our city and we must dedicate all the attention and commitment necessary to them so that they can attend a school suited to their needs, are encouraged not to abandon studies and aim to achieve a high level of education. We are proud that our objectives have found the support of Europe and we will try to make the best use of these funds for the well-being of the young Milanese, with the aim of leaving no one behind and building an increasingly open and inclusive school".
 
“The economic crisis and the great changes of recent years - adds the councilor for social and housing policies Gabriele Rabaiotti - have generated new needs and increasingly complex requirements that the Municipality of Milan must address by putting in place a welfare system that increasingly takes account of the digital turn, of new forms of discrimination, of attention to diversity, but also and above all of the new needs for community and aggregation that develop as a consequence. The choice to systematize all services for minors and their families, to create a digital platform and physical spaces to encourage and facilitate access for all goes precisely in this direction and we are happy that the European Union also believes in project we have imagined for the city of the future".
 
There are 18 thousand citizens under 225 in Milan and from demographic, economic and social analyzes it appears that one in ten in 2018 lived in conditions of absolute poverty. For this reason, among the various focuses indicated by the European call, it was chosen to address the issue of urban poverty.
 
The important economic, but also demographic and social transformations of recent years place the education and welfare system faced with new challenges: for example that of bridging the educational gap between the center and the periphery, where 43% of children under 15 live. years and where the phenomena of dropout and school dropout significantly emerge before graduation, resulting in less access to education and the world of work (in some neighborhoods only 12% of children graduate). Added to this is the growing percentage of under 18s of non-Italian origin in schools, which often generates the phenomenon of the so-called 'white flight', the flight of Italian families towards central schools to the detriment of some peripheral schools. Last but not least, we must consider the changes in families and the different needs that the public system is called upon to respond to in order to guarantee everyone the possibility of accessing the city's resources and opportunities.
 
Milan wants to react to each of these challenges by building an inclusive and cohesive "city of girls and boys", which chooses to promote the well-being of all minors and considers them a resource, as the main players in the city of tomorrow. To achieve these objectives, the Wish Mi project, which will develop over a three-year period, aims to involve all the Municipality's departments that have an impact on minors, as well as the associations involved in the area with which, by March 2020, a strategic plan will be defined for the welfare of minors in Milan. To promote accessibility to services, a digital platform will be created within which all the offers of services - educational, social, cultural, sporting but not only - for minors will be brought together, with the possibility of activating digital vouchers for purchasing services and experiencing educational gaming experiences.
Seven physical centers will then be launched within as many public spaces by 2022, where qualified personnel will assist families to help them fully benefit from the educational and welfare services of the Milan area and to guarantee full accessibility to opportunities, also through the co-design of some services. 
The centers will be called Wish Mi Hub, precisely because at the center there will be the "wishes" of the children and young people of Milan, and activities and services will be promoted there, designed and implemented together with the minors and their families and in collaboration with the realities of the third sector.