Need assessment to foster social inclusion in Tuscany

Place: Tuscany, Metropolitan area of Florence, Prato

Duration: January – April 2018

Client: Oxfam for the Burberry Foundation.

Context

After years of deep economic recession, too many people in Tuscany are at risk of social exclusion and caught up in a cycle of poverty, isolation, unemployment and low education. Migrants and young people are the most affected. This phenomenon is particularly striking in the metropolitan area of Florence where, despite the economic opportunities offered by the manufacturing and tourism sector, inequality is increasing particularly among the young people. The Burberry Foundation awarded a grant to Oxfam to design and implement a programme aiming at fostering social inclusion in Tuscany. Oxfam commissioned a need assessment to ARCO to be carried out in the programme implementation areas.

Objective

The programme will be implemented by Oxfam throughout 2018-2022 and will focus on three areas of intervention:

  1. Schooling: introducing school mentoring in secondary school
  2. Community Cohesion: strengthening existing Community Centres (or setting up new Community Centres)
  3. Access to services: promoting the role of Community Facilitators within the Communities.

 

Our contribution

Before implementing the programme, in January 2018, Oxfam assigned to ARCO the task of carrying out a need assessment of the four areas targeted by the programme.

The objectives of the need assessment were:

  1. Understanding social exclusion in the four project areas, with a specific focus on economic poverty, access to social and healthcare services, school drop-out
  2. Mapping the main stakeholders involved in the four project areas
  3. Providing Oxfam with recommendations on how to implement the activities

The research activity featured both desk analysis and field work. Tools such as context analysis, semi-structured interviews, and participative workshops were used to collect qualitative data.

The results of the need assessment were divided in three main sections for each of the four areas.

Section 1: Overview of the issues

Section 2:  Analysis of the stakeholders involved/affected by the previously identified issues

Section 3: Recommendations on how to implement the project

Read more on our Inclusive Development Unit