Culture and inclusion: "Echo helps young people"

The Echo aps association was born as a result of an initiative by X Factory , a project funded by ANCI (Italian National Association of Italian Municipalities) and created to address the need to intercept, engage, and re-engage young people aged 14 to 35 who are not in education, training, or employment. The association thus becomes not only the most recent addition to the Legnano association, having been established on Tuesday, July 14, but also the youngest, consisting of a group of twenty- and thirty-somethings who belong to the youth bibliothecary group. The association is the result of a process that began last April when the young people were guided through a theoretical and practical program consisting of four meetings. This served as a motivational workshop and gave them the opportunity to interact with organizations already operating in the Alto Milanese area, providing them with a theoretical and practical toolkit on the legal, economic, and organizational aspects of forming an association. With the support of the Energicamente cooperative, a project partner, the association was established, entirely funded by the project.

The association will focus on organizing the Sustainability Festival , an event that promotes the development of best practices and spreads the culture of sustainability; the creation of cultural, artistic, and educational initiatives to actively engage local youth, particularly those with disabilities (NEETs); ongoing collaboration with the Augusto Marinoni Library to enhance municipal spaces as places for community gathering and participation; and organizing exhibitions, conferences, film and video screenings, concerts, shows, workshops, and meetings. The association's president is Giorgia Silvestri, vice president Giulia Rotini, treasurer Maurizio Vito Ingrosso, and councilors Ivan Maglio, Pier Claudio Rizza, Valentina Macrì, Alessio Zingaro, and Alessia Youssef. The association will officially present itself to the city at the X Factory project presentation event scheduled for September 25th. This initial initiative was completed after the Municipality of Legnano, with X Factory, participated in a public call for proposals from ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities), obtaining €118,500 in funding from the "Youth Policy Fund" (2020-2021) from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department for Youth Policies and Universal Civil Service. The project's total cost, €149,375, is complemented by local co-financing of €30,875.

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