Bocconi in the Hall of Fame for Social Commitment

A plaque in the Hall of Fame, a gesture with high symbolic content to thank the groups and institutions involved since 2016 in an initiative created through the collaboration between Bocconi University and the Penitentiary Administration of Lombardy. Five years ago, they launched a project of social mobility and re-education aimed at giving Italian inmates the opportunity to attend the three-year Bachelor program in business administration and management from prison. Then on Monday 19 April at Opera prison, the Rector of Bocconi University, Gianmario Verona, received recognition from prison director Silvio Di Gregorio and the commander of the prison police, Amerigo Fusco.

"This is a very significant award because it enhances a collaboration in which we strongly believe", explains Carlo Salvato, full professor at the Bocconi Department of Management and Technology who has been in charge of the project since the beginning, "also because it is an initiative which enhances some of the values on which Bocconi University is founded, those of an open society, solidarity and social mobility. The aim of this project is to offer prison students not only intellectual and professional opportunities but also personal enrichment, thanks to the constant human relationship between teachers and students ".

But they also try to create a network of contacts, as Salvato explains, "with the surrounding area and its main actors to obtain resources, contributions, ideas and thus avoid the idea of a closed and isolated prison". The initiative is aimed at inmates from all over Italy who have been cleared bythe prison administration, who will then converge in the Opera prison, where they will receive material from Bocconi to study and prepare for exams. "First, however, like all university applicants, they too will have to take the admission test", concludes Salvato.