Miryana Malamin-Siriyski, Director of Maria’s World Foundation, and Mariana Miteva, Daycare Center Manager of Maria’s World Foundation visited for a week (9-14 of October) the social cooperative “Two Thousand and One” (Duemilauno) in Trieste, Italy, within a shadowing program that provided them with the opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with local social enterprise in the framework of the SEHUBS project supported by the European Commission.

They got acquainted with the activities of social cooperatives, learned more about the history of deinstitutionalization, started in Trieste by the remarkable psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, saw the activities in support of migrants and people with disabilities, social businesses – a restaurant and a workshop for bags made of recycled materials.

In Italy, social cooperatives do not distribute profits and, like social enterprises, reinvest the proceeds in their activities. We were able to learn a lot about the different aspects of the work, the way professionals apply them on a daily basis and the principles of deinstitutionalisation.