Common goods

"Common goods are those goods which, if enriched, enrich everyone, if impoverished, impoverish everyone": this is the definition, simple and very effective, given by Professor Gregorio Arena, president of Labsus, the Laboratory for subsidiarity.

But what are common goods for an association like Uisp? They are the "places of sport for all": spaces and elements of the city that, qualified and managed as public goods, become common goods when, triggering a political and social process, the community that relates to that particular asset starts to manage it in shared and participatory way, with the aim of protecting it, regenerating it and opening it to collective use.

It is therefore a question of applying a social dimension typical of common goods also to sport activities that are practiced there, with these characteristics: limiting all forms of exclusion and discrimination in access; ability to generate community resources; to overcome the logic of competition; experiment with forms of collaboration between different subjects; open up real possibilities for exercising the right to sport and play, to movement, to health. Through this process, public spaces and Uisp sports facilities become places where to propose sport as an inclusive practice, an integral part of everyday life, a free choice of every citizen and, lastly, an opportunity for participation and civil/social leadership, a tool to activate participatory processes that enhance the social networks and the social capital of a community and a territory.

With the Open Space project (funded by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies under Law 383/2000 - 2016), Uisp has already begun to test itself on the ability to integrate sport with new models of involvement and activation of Young people. Testing therefore new models of local welfare, activating and generative, with the possibility of rethinking and regenerating urban spaces, favoring their re-appropriation by citizens. Grassroots sport, sport for all, can be one of the possible triggers of these processes, which are built on knowledge disseminated in a community and which become real training grounds for active citizenship education.

Uisp has the characteristics to play a leading role in this new season of social protagonism, based on the principle of civic collaboration and widespread responsibility.

The specific objectives are: to strengthen synergies with local and national networks, from the third sector to public administrations; enhance the Open Space project as a laboratory for experimental experiences; map Uisp territorial realities, learn about and tell about the best experiences, respond to the problems that arise in the phases of awarding, managing and renewing the concession of public sports facilities; define Uisp guidelines for the management of sports facilities, combining objectives of economic and environmental sustainability with those of social inclusion.