Credits: picture from http://www.innesto.org
On the sides of the Endine Lake there is a real estate called “la Casa del Pescatore”, one of the access points to the Cavallina Valley providing services to tourists wanting to visit the area. The Casa has been managed for 16 years by a social cooperative, L’Innesto, on behalf of the Mountain Community of Laghi Bergamaschi: since 2001 the Cooperative has been offering the possibility of enjoying the lake in a sustainable way, and has participated to the local development practices and to the touristic acceptance in the area.
On June 21st, 2017 the Province of Bergamo communicated to the social cooperative L’Innesto the publication of an alienation announcement referred to the Casa del Pescatore. The local government has offered to the cooperative the right of first refusal (to be exercised within August, 19th) at the entry price of 865K euros.
The Innesto cooperative is of course well interested to the civic acquisition of this common good, in order to be able to carry on with the activities through all these years have allowed a sustainable fruition of the lake by the valley community and its hosts. The cooperative’s own financial sources, however, do not allow the accomplishment of the process of acquisition as prescribed by the local government.
That is why L’Innesto cooperative, in order to maintain the Casa del Pescatore as an open space for everyone, as well as to pursue non-profit, civic, solidaristic and social activities, has decided to:
- activate a capitalization plan with the subscription of further action by the actual 150 associated and the acquisition of new associated from the inhabitants and hosts of the valley (process already in place);
- start a crowdfunding campaign, through a call to action/open letter addressed to the inhabitants and hosts of the valley.
This campaign is hopefully going to allow to the social cooperative to acquire the common good, as well as to renovate it and activate new services and activities to generate new jobs and to develop a new incisive promotion of the territory.
As Professor Christian Iaione stated in the article Città e beni comuni, “the urban spaces and services of common interest […] do satisfy many needs of living in the city because they are functional to the community’s health as well as to the individual exercise of citizenship’s rights: the quality of life and of work, sociality, mobility, amusement, sharing, sense of community, the possibility of growing new capacities and passions…all those things are immediately affected by the major or minor quality of collectively used infrastructures that a city can make available to its inhabitants” (click here to read the full article). That is why he suggested that in some the right strategy is to buy back the commons and create self-sustaining collective institutions that manage them.
Those spaces of common interest are fundamental and vital for the development of communities, and that’s why they are conceived as urban commons. Other similar experiences of civic acquisition are carried out in Rome by the Community for the Public Park of Centocelle (www.co-roma.it) and in Milan by the Macao experience (http://www.macaomilano.org).
—> Click here to read the open letter
—> Click here to download the donation form
La Cooperativa Sociale L’Innesto ha lanciato un appello per allargare la propria base associativa e una campagna di crowdfunding per raccogliere fondi destinati all’acquisizione della Casa del Pescatore e mantenerlo come luogo aperto e fruibile da tutti.
–> Clicca qui per leggere la lettera aperta alla cittadinanza