Partner organizations
CIAC
Italian Unit
CIAC, a non-profit organisation, was established in 2001 in Italy (Parma). Since the beginning, it was active in the field of political asylum in the protection, reception, integration of asylum seekers and refugees (643 refugees and asylum seekers received in 2022, out of which women represent 42%), as well as in social orientation and first level legal assistance targeting Third Country Nationals (5.900 people assisted in 2022). CIAC implements SAI (Sistema Accoglienza Integrazione, the Institutional reception system within Ministry of Interior framework) programs in the municipality of Parma and the corresponding district; AMIF national funded projects targeting specific groups (e.g. TCNs families and single mothers in charge of one or more children; migrants affected by mental health problems) as well as refugees in the phase-out of their institutional reception; other projects focusing on Innovation in Social Housing, Community Mentorship, GBV. Throughout the different funded projects CIAC guarantees: housing, orientation, training and capacity building (language courses, job orientation sessions, soft skills development training with a particular focus on rights, dignity, and relational/social skills), health support through health literacy / health promotion and the effective partnership with health institutions; support to parents, in particular single mothers, in order to promote a balance between work and personal life.
GRT
Italian Unit
Gruppo per le Relazioni Transculturali (GRT) is an Italian NGO founded in Milan in 1968 by Professor Rosalba Terranova Cecchini, pioneer of transcultural thinking in Italy.
For over 50 years, we have been committed to defending human rights, promoting mental health and psychosocial well-being in Italy and worldwide.
GRT activities abroad concern direct interventions and training in community mental health and psychosocial support, social-health care for refugees and displaced persons, child protection, fight against gender-based violence and awareness for human rights.
In Italy, in addition to direct psycho-educational activities with fragile and vulnerable subjects both Italian and of foreign origin, GRT carries out clinical supervision for service providers operators and advanced trainings, including the first School of Transcultural Psychotherapy in Italy.
OLINDA
Italian Unit
Olinda is both a social cooperative and voluntary association, created with the aim to close and transform the large psychiatric hospital in the northern suburbs of Milan. Social entrepreneurship, welfare mix and cultural activities changed the area in a laboratory of social, urban and human innovation for mental health users as well as for ordinary citizens of the whole metropolitan area.
In 1996 Olinda started with practices of vocational training for mental health users and organized a big summer festival in the psychiatric hospital including in the organization many groups of the third sector and involving different local authorities. In 1998, Olinda started up a social enterprise, in an effort to combine services for the city with services for mental health care.
Olinda’s social innovation is linked to the ability to combine social, cultural, economic and spatial objectives, working simultaneously on empowering disadvantaged people and on the social urban regeneration of the city.