Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The project takes up the baton of Bella Milano which involved around 200 people. Since May, 9 teams in 6 municipalities have been on the streets. The initiative is open to private financing. Bertolé: "The hope is that Milanese companies will want to follow this example, to increasingly expand the numbers and effectiveness of the initiative"

Milan, May 24 2023 – The Municipality of Milan strengthens "Guardians of beauty", a national project which involves collaboration between the public, private and third sectors to promote the social re-inclusion of vulnerable people through their involvement in care projects in certain areas of the city.

Starting from May, thanks to municipal resources and private investments, nine teams will be active in six municipalities of the city (2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9), with the aim of taking care of areas green areas, streets, squares, flowerbeds and parks reported by the Administration, in collaboration with AMSA. The objective is to further expand the areas involved in the coming months.

"Guardians of beauty", promoted and managed by Consorzio Communitas, Fondazione Angeli del bello, Associazione Extrapulita, with the support of Italian Caritas, takes up the baton of Bella Milano, an initiative active since 2017 in the city and which has involved around 200 people in courses of re-inclusion and worked for the redevelopment of different areas of the city, from the Central Station to Corvetto, from Baggio to via Sarpi, from via Padova to via Gola.

"Cultivating beauty – declares the councilor for Welfare and Health Lamberto Bertolé – and, at the same time, taking care of supporting fragile people in a process of acquiring or reacquiring their autonomy is a very ambitious objective that we have pursued in recent years with Bella Milano and which we now want to relaunch in a more structural and systematic way, given the good results of the experiment, which was highly appreciated both by the women and men involved and by the neighborhoods that benefited from it".

The project now evolves and doubles, following two lines: 
on the one hand, in fact, the Municipality of Milan is the first Italian Administration that has directly invested funds in the project, also activating teams that involved citizens' income beneficiaries required to carry out Projects useful to the community (PUC). As foreseen by the recent national legislation which has gone beyond the measure of citizenship income, these teams will continue in this form until December 2023. The Municipality is then ready to adapt the project to involve the recipients of Inclusion Allowance (AdI) and support for training and work, given that the Labor Decree has confirmed the obligation to participate in public utility projects organized by local authorities also starting from 2024.

On the other hand, "Custodi del bello", which is also active in the cities of Brescia, Rome, Savona and Florence, is open to collaboration with private financiers: companies and production companies that operate in Milan and want to help take care of the city and its most vulnerable citizens by donating funds to the project to finance the activation of new teams. In addition to the two financed by the Municipality, there are seven teams already operational or about to start, of which three financed by the BPM Foundation, two by the Cariplo Foundation and Redo SGR, one by Dils and one by RealStep. 

"Delegating to the public and the Third Sector – adds the councilor – the task of dealing with welfare in a world in which fragility increases and needs are increasingly complex would be a short-sighted choice. With the Guardians of Beauty, we strengthen a model that wants overcome the dualism between those who deal with development - the productive fabric, businesses, local activities - and those who deal with care. In thanking the private partners who are at our side in the project and who have invested to make it more beautiful and the neighborhoods of Milan are attractive, we therefore want to reaffirm the importance of this synergy, with the hope that other Milanese realities will want to follow this example, to increasingly expand the numbers and effectiveness of the initiative".

In total, the project can potentially involve around 180 people over the next 12 months. Numbers that could increase if other entities demonstrate their willingness to contribute.

The service financed by the Administration is managed, on behalf of the Municipality of Milan, by the Farsi Proximo Consortium through the cooperatives Detto Fatto, Vesti Solidale and Sammamet. The teams financed by the Administration require the presence of a team leader and a number of between three and five beneficiaries of the citizen's income, who rotate daily (each beneficiary is required to work eight hours a week, in accordance with the legislation national). The teams financed by private individuals are instead made up of team leaders hired by cooperatives and trainees and volunteers in socio-work conditions identified by both public and private social inclusion services. The "Keepers of beauty", operational all year round, for six days a week, from 8 to 30 and from 12 to 30, are also supported by professional educators from the Sociosfera, Intrecci and Farsi cooperatives neighbor, who deal with job placement and intercept any signs of discomfort or difficulty, liaising with municipal social services.