Fondazione Grameen Italia is a non-profit organization born in July 2010 from the collaboration between the University of Bologna, Unicredit Foundation and Grameen Trust as an expression of the will of the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to start a center in Europe aimed at the promotion of microcredit and Social Business and based on the Grameen Bank model.
After the first years spent in the field of research on the topic of microcredit, since 2017 Grameen Italia has been accredited by the National Agency for Microcredit to offer accompanying services to microcredit.
They are the so-called “Auxiliary non-financial assistance and monitoring services for microcredit” required by Italian law.
Fondazione Grameen Italia also offers business development services to individuals and organizations that do not intend to use microcredit to develop their business.
In pursuit of its social mission, that of promoting socio-economic inclusion not only of non-bankable subjects but more generally of those who live in conditions of vulnerability, the Fondazione Grameen Italia operates in the areas of financial education and social planning, collaborating with civil society organizations in carrying out educational and employment support interventions.
Finally, to respond to the new non-financial social reporting needs, some of which made more urgent by the Italian 2016 “Third Sector Reform”, Grameen Italia carries out studies for the assessment of social impact.
The operating model that moves the action of Grameen Italia is based on the principles promoted by Prof. Yunus and is aimed at intervening for the economic development of the territory through the development of the human capital in terms of financial education and enhancement of specific skills and transversal characteristics of the entrepreneurial mindset.
Starting from this perspective, Fondazione Grameen Italia elaborates its actions by activating and enhancing the personal resources of the beneficiaries and the organizational ones of the partner subjects, with a view to developing and co-producing value.
For this reason, the methodology adopted for accompaniment to microcredit and for financial education activities is based on the application of an experiential approach, inspired by the studies and methodologies developed by Prof. Yunus.