Phoenix Project: When Students Can Make a Difference

Almost 400 student applications, 40 internships and 10 field projects started, and 32 different institutions involved. The Phoenix project carried out by Bocconi and the Citi Foundation concluded with numbers that demonstrate one thing above all: the desire of students to engage in activities with a high social impact and contribute to a service sector severely constrained by the pandemic in its ability to respond to needs. On the other hand, the positive response in the numerous institutions and organizations that welcomed the students shows an interest in engaging the ideas and fresh energies of twenty-year-olds.

The result was a collaboration that was able to highlight the contribution of the students through field projects. In addition to the project with CADMI, which saw some students working side by side with the operators of the Association that deals with abused women, the Bocconi students developed a number of other projects. They ranged from the elaboration of models for forecasting financial flows for Doctors with Africa CUAMM, to assess the impact of an initiative of Terre des Hommes Italia, to the drafting of a diversity / disability program for the Adecco Foundation, and the drafting of the social report for the Buzzi Foundation.

Giovanni Carletti, in the second year of his MSc in Economics and management of government and international organizations, together with Edoardo Ardito and Luigi Roncoroni carried out an impact analysis of the Francesca Rava Foundation's interventions in support of Italian hospitals during the pandemic. "I have always had a passion for the third sector; I am also a scout," he says. "Working alongside the Foundation made me feel how much their work has an important social impact and how much ours could have with them." Furthermore, "I really appreciated the fact that we had the opportunity to propose our ideas and to be able to discuss them with them"

This is echoed by Alessandra Fattori, in the first year of the Double Degree China MIM, who with Gian Marco Serra, Francesco Zollo and Giunio Panarelli took care of a crowdfunding campaign for Sesta Opera San Fedele aimed at raising funds for the inmates of the Opera prison: "A demanding experience, first because a field project puts you in front of the challenge of a practical experience, not just an academic one. But also, because we have faced a reality, the prison, which our prejudices say is a place to be hidden, that we don't want to see, considered a dead end from which it is hard to start again. " An experience, therefore, that "has also enriched us from a human point of view", adds the student.

The great variety and richness of Phoenix's projects and internships "demonstrate how Bocconi University's Third Mission is actually the first," adds Carlo Salvato, professor of business strategy and academic manager of the project. "That is, to put our students and our students in a position to leave a better world than the one they have found, with their own professional and human commitment."

Silvia Boschetti, public and government affairs officer of Citi Italia is also convinced of this: "The intuition had together with Bocconi University in March 2020, therefore at the beginning of the pandemic, to provide concrete help to the third sector in terms of managerial methods and energies innovative, such as those contributed by the students, proved to be correct. This was demonstrated by the presentations and testimonies of students and members of NGOs. Phoenix was a project of effective impact according to the objectives of the pathway to progress program of the Citi Foundation."