The Venice Sustainability Foundation (VSF) took part at the seminar “Of Craft Making. Testimonies and inspirations from realities of excellence,” which is part of Ca’ Foscari’s ‘Homo Faber’ project.
The idea is to enhance the craftsmanship, the manufacture, typical of the know-how related to Made in Italy. Homo Faber aims to increase transversal skills useful for enhancing the typical sectors of the Venetian reality and boosting employability, promoting lifelong learning and retraining in entrepreneurial and digital skills.
As management professor Stefano Micelli said, “Global challenges impose collective actions. This is why we have identified three key words: enterprise, network and ecosystem”.
The Venetian university, in the Management department, hosted the in-depth discussion in which VSF Director General Alessandro Costa and Stefano Micelli participated during the panel “Dialogue on Development Approaches for the City”.
The director presented the Foundation, the composition of founding and co-founders members, clarifying in particular the modus operandi: “Thanks to relational resources, know-how, technical and even financial expertise, we move on the approach of intercepting and accompanying to implementation ideas, initiatives, projects that our partners present to us. These are discussed in a broader context, grouped into thematic areas, and when the idea reaches consensus it is easier then to bring it to fruition. The spectrum allows us to have a broad enough supply chain to know who can work for their areas in the realization of the idea”.
Costa then specified VSF’s role as facilitator and promoter of projects whose ultimate goal is to create an integrated model of sustainability for the Venetian territory: “The integration of social, economic, cultural and environmental variables provides restitution in this sense”.
The director then went into detail, dwelling on the thematic areas and cross-cutting projects of interest to the Foundation. The discussion shifted mainly to “Venice City Campus”: “It is a project that starts from the analysis of a city that is below the national average as a university city. So the idea of boosting this sector comes from here, from the fact that there is probably room to grow. It is intended to develop a knowledge economy cluster consistent with Venice’s capabilities and services related to educational activities”.
Lastly, the future of VSF was also discussed, with the sustainable tourism area that started about six months ago, passing through the centrality of an issue such as hydrogen, defined as “one of the industrial activities for the redevelopment of Porto Marghera,” but also on the experiences related to sustainable catering and sustainable fashion, which are being developed.
