"I work for a small community foundation which was founded only five years ago in a beautiful North West region of Italy (Aosta Valley). One of our goals is to extend the foundation’s network of collaborators and improve our capacity for vision and action in order to best serve the local community.

My participation at the Global Summit on Community Philanthropy will be a great opportunity to learn from best practices, exchange views, problems and solutions with other colleagues and better understand how community philanthropy can be developed.

I am also a professor of Political Science. My research focuses on social policy administration and I am particularly interested in understanding how it is possible to enhance the governance of community foundations by building networks with public administrations and social actors, and in relation to fundraising.

As far as the Aosta Valley Community Foundation is concerned, one of the most difficult aspects is to increase the participation of local private actors (from the grassroots up) in the promotion of social cohesion. This is a particularly challenging goal in a context characterized by limited practice of circular subsidiarity, growing fear and distrust among citizens and economic downturn or stagnation.

I hope that the Summit will be an inspiring opportunity to expand my horizons beyond the parochial concerns of a small Italian region and to bring into focus what a community foundation can do. "

People Behind the Summit