Abili Oltre as a Condition of Normality (by Marino D’Angelo)

Abili Oltre is a non-profit social promotion association that promotes, protects and ensures a normality that expands its horizon to the diversity of able-bodied and disabled people, that recognises in work the dignity of the person and that pursues the well-being of everyone and for everyone.

Its areas of activity are: diversity and inclusion, job placement, social food, train-ing, accessible art and communication, New Deal for the suburbs, care for the fragile, intergenerational alliance. It cooperates with anyone who recognises itself in its system of values, sharing the methods of participation and integration aimed at achieving the advantages of a collective and connective intelligence in its actions. It has a horizontal organisational dimension and facilitates the devel-opment of an active citizenship through information exchange processes, the construction of a common memory, the coordination and sharing of projects in an open and dynamic relationship with people, institutions, companies and ter-ritories. In particular, it designs, tests and implements non-profit inclusive eco-nomic realities and training and information opportunities to promote the equal entry into the world of work of women and men of all age groups with disabilities or disadvantages.

Among the Partners: Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, Poste Italiane, ADAPT, First Social Life, ReNaLiArt, First Cisl, Grimaldi Lines, Lazio Crea, Forum Terzo Set-tore Lazio, SAI Società Autori d’Italia, Mandragola Editrice.

Abili Oltre addresses the theme of disability management in different ways, par-ticularly in two of its projects: HackDiversability and ColDiversa.

‘HackDiversability, the power of creativity for work inclusion’ was one of the first inclusive Italian hackathons for company managers. A training course born from the collaboration between Abili Oltre and Unica, the Corporate Academy of the

UnipolSai Group and carried out in Bologna on 8 and 9 November 2019. The project stems from the consideration that the traditional approach to problem solving and decision making is proving to be increasingly inadequate to face and solve the complexities of form and content of productivity 4.0, particularly in the field of disability management and, more generally, in the field of diversity man-agement. The area of professional competence, although it tends to extend to technological innovation and to a managerialism oriented to the diversity of lan-guages and needs of the Third Millennium, is still strongly anchored to criteria of efficiency and effectiveness from the Fordian manual, failing to overcome the limit of standard skills. The idea was to bring creativity – intended as a transversal skill, a quality underlying the human aptitude to adapt to circumstances and to adapt circumstances to oneself – to the first place in the hierarchy of professional skills and to make it a driver in strategic business management. HackDiversability is a training course in hackathon format that exploits the energy of contamina-tion between points of view, social and personal condicontamina-tions, life experiences and different cultures to activate the habit of no-limit creativity in corporate profes-sionalism in daily strategic and management choices. In doing so, it brings man-agement decision-making processes in line with the liquid market of the digital age.

Business managers and lay people from the world of disability, immigration, so-cial disadvantage and academia, divided into 8 teams of 6 participants, challenged each other in a 48-hour non-stop search for the best solution in order to achieve two business objectives identified and launched by the business leadership. The themes were the development of innovative distribution networks accessible to people with disabilities and the design of new offers in response to the specific protection and well-being needs of people from different cultures or languages.

The success of the experience, in terms of inclusion, professional growth and as a driver of product innovation, made HackDiversability leave the training perime-ter and become the working philosophy of the business units involved in the course. Abili Oltre currently has on its agenda the implementation of inclusive training courses in industrial sectors and public administration.

ColDiversa is the project that brings Abili Oltre’s expertise in diversity manage-ment into play and makes it grow. Food is an echo of diversity: the human being is omnivorous, but chooses different foods in different places. “Man is what he eats”, said Ludwig Feuerback as early as the second half of the 19^th century. But he is also what he cooks. Food – in its identity aspects of product, cuisine and table – describes a dependent variable of personal dignity and social well-being.

The construction of a fit-for-all world also involves rethinking the choice of food, in terms of the social and environmental sustainability of production and consumption, limiting waste, commitment to health, respect for the food and wine traditions of peoples and a fair and solidarity-based distribution of food in all geographical and social quadrants of the planet.

ColDiversa is a network for the promotion, distribution and sale of food and wine products from non-profit organisations that operate in an environmentally sus-tainable manner and employ workers with disabilities or social disadvantages in the production process. It is an alternative, supportive, inclusive and innovative network that thrives on the work of people with disabilities, abilities and social fragility, who are involved in the entire supply chain, from production to distri-bution, according to their working skills. A non-profit project, which through the ‘Trust Fund’ of Abili Oltre provides for the total reuse of profits in non-repayable financing of diversity and inclusion-oriented startups.

The aim is to bring out and promote the food area of the non-profit sector by offering businesses and associations real opportunities for sales, and therefore for economic and organisational development, with the primary aim of increas-ing the employment rate of disadvantaged groups. All this is in line with Abili Oltre’s belief that the winning strategy of the non-profit sector is to develop productions capable of competing in the market at 360 degrees, offering the community the opportunity to combine consumption needs with civil commit-ment. It is time to get non-profit companies out of the clichés of a suffocating political correctness and to make them recognise themselves as a business tout court, lowering the flag of non-profit to raise the one of social profit.

The Business Plan is structured in 5 Work Sites:

• Marketplace ColDiversa.org, the web marketplace of the members of the network;

• MercatinPiazza ColDiversa, public food markets at Km 0 twice a week in Italian town squares;

• Macaroni social food, sales outlets for fresh pasta and first course condi-ments and restaurant, catering and street food activities in Italy and abroad;

• GAS ColDiversa, territorial promotion initiatives for the involvement and establishment of solidarity purchasing groups;

• ColDiversa ComunicAzione, work team for the design and management of promotional and advertising initiatives and external and internal communication.

The project started in May 2021 with the opening of the first Macaroni Social Food point of sale in Rome.

What have our experiences of social commitment in the world of work taught us about disability and diversity management in general? Basically, that disability management is a cultural approach, before being a scale factor in the organisation of a company and an area of competence and professional intervention. Incred-ibly, talking about disability management and not pure and simple management, although essential, can lead to an error of perspective in the approach to the subject. Almost as if it could exist, in a globalised world and with a constantly increasing life expectancy, a business management and a way to stay on the

market that does not take into account the explosion of diversity in collective and individual needs and in particular in the world of work. All the market indi-cators of recent years show how the transformation of the business paradigm in the direction of diversity and inclusiveness management is increasingly showing its nature of economic convenience rather than ethical choice.

A leap forward in civilisation that will condemn to failure those who have not been able to grasp it in time.

2.6. BB S.p.A., or Being a Different Kind of Entrepreneur (by Veronica