QuBì
Promoted by Fondazione Cariplo with the support of Fondazione Vismara, Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi, Fondazione Fiera Milano and Fondazione Snam, QuBì is an aid program for children from poverty-stricken families in Milan.
The program has been in place for the past three years and hinges on a ‘social infrastructure’ made up of parishes, social co-operatives, community organizations, and community-based social workers. These players work together as a team in a spirit of mutual collaboration, and formed alliances among them, creating “neighborhood networks” capable of intercepting people in need and providing tangible responses to them. We are talking about 23 networks of 415 organizations working in 25 Milan neighborhoods that every day provide poverty relief.
According to estimates, in Milan 1 out of 10 children lives in extreme poverty, which often severely hampers their growth and education. A poor diet, no quality free time, difficulties accessing preventive healthcare and their families’ inability to afford basic school supplies are just some of the hurdles faced by many young children in Milan for whom the present is a struggle and the future is uncertain.
To give those children a more certain future, for the past three years QuBì has backed the work of the several hundred organizations and other players providing poverty relief in Milan, supporting them and strengthening their response capacity.
Responding to the need for food, the QuBì Program opened 2 hubs for the collection and distribution of donated food in collaboration with the Lombardy Foodbank and the Milan municipal administration Food Policy program. The two hubs supply 6 solidarity emporiums and 3 solidarity shops of Milan Caritas and provide food to hundreds of disadvantaged families.
In addition, together with the nonprofit IBVA (Istituto Beata Vergine Addolorata), QuBì supports Milan downtown Solidando Social Market responding to the food needs of families with very young children.
To help families with babies, in March 2020 the QuBì Program started a collaboration with Save the Children and initiated Per Mano-QuBì, a program that has helped 220 mothers with babies born in particular vulnerable conditions in Milan in the midst of the pandemic by providing them assistance and support for the first 1,000 days of life of the babies.
To address inequalities in access to technology, following the sudden shift to online education QuBì set in motion a network of players to collect devices and recondition them, and distributed 638 laptops and internet connection packages. In addition, through the local networks of players QuBì has helped more than 2,800 children catch up on lost learning, and have other extra-curricular activities, including, whenever possible, at some 150 dedicated physical spaces.
In the three years of QuBì operation, the number of people assisted under this program with at least one support measure has gone from 25,000 to around 50,000 (of whom 24,600 children).
QuBì is continuing its efforts to help families and their children living in vulnerable conditions also for the current two-year period (2021-2022), with fresh impetus and newer responses.
QuBì Program activities can also be supported by making a donation to the QuBì Fund established thanks to a collaboration with the Milan Community Foundation. To make a donation click here.
