When corporations find business opportunities in social problems

Monica Straniero

According the theory of Share values, corporations need to come up with better solutions for society, not just for business itself. Mark Kramer, FSG co-founder and managing director, offers his insights on what shared value means.

Civil society organizations' support in building inclusive institutions

Martino Pillitteri

The social situation and the threat of terrorism are the two main factors that could undermine the gains of the revolution. However, civil society organizations are not passive nor afraid to play a role in the promotion of democratic values and practices. Just as PASC-Tunisie is doing with its Programme d’Appui à la Société Civile program.

Bernd Nilles: “North and South are no longer divided, but unified in facing the same problems”

Joshua Massarenti

CIDSE’s Secretary General talks to Vita International about the most pressing global challenges facing us today. “Agenda 2030 and the SDGs can de facto lead to a kind of systemic change to our economic model and behaviors.“We need courageous politicians who push their governments to take bold decisions and people who take their lives into their own hands and make changes now" he says.

Rethinking refugee camps

Kimberley Evans

With the refugee crisis still ongoing, Vita International spoke to Veronica Lai, a student in Science of Architecture and Planning program at the Faculty of Architecture of Alghero, under the supervision of Prof. Paola Rizzi, currently working on her research for Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan about how emergency architecture and refugee camp design can help provide refugees with a space in which they can “find a sense of security, of belonging, and where their human dignity is fully respected.”

Violence, rape, and forced marriage: inside the lives of female refugees

Kimberley Evans

"I've been a refugee since the day I was born" begins Mina Jaf, female refugee rights activist and this year's Women Refugee Commission Voice of Courage 2016 award winner. Speaking to Vita International, she describes what she saw inside the closed government camps in Greece. Gender based violence, forced marriages, rape, and child kidnapping. "It's so much worse now than when I was a child." Now she is starting her own NGO called Women Refugee Route, which focuses on providing female interpreters for women on the migration route. "I saw it first with my mother, and then with the thousands of women I met in Iraq and Greece that it would be easier for them to explain themselves in their own language," she says.

Aiesec integrating refugees

Cristina Barbetta

AIESEC Italy has launched InteGREAT, a project with the aim of receiving and integrating refugees and asylum seekers in Italy. On the 3rd of May AIESEC Italy was awarded by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, the prestigious European Charlemagne Youth Prize thanks to the InteGREAT project. Interview with Guiscardo Urso, President of AIESEC Italy.

Libya, not lost in transition

Martino Pillitteri

Farida El Allagi, Libyan Ambassador at the European Union, acknowledges to Vita international how her country and the Arab world are progressing despite the internal deterrents and the interferences from abroad.

Naomi Klein: «Funders need to take responsibility»

Ottavia Spaggiari

The journalist, activist and bestselling author shares her expectations for the Paris summit on climate change and how philanthropic foundations can play a key role in the divestment movement

Increased repression putting human rights defenders lives at risk

Kimberley Evans

The recent shooting of Burundian human rights defender Pierre Claver Mbonimpa highlights what human rights foundation Front Line Defender’s are calling a “growing global backlash against human rights defenders (HRDs), which has now reached crisis point”. Vita International spoke to Emma Achilli, head of Front Line Defender's European Union Office, to learn more.