About Us

Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (UCSC)

Founded in Milan in 1921, it is one of the most important Catholic universities in Europe. With its four campuses in Milan, Brescia, Piacenza-Cremona, and Rome, it is also the only university in Italy to operate on a national scale. The numbers demonstrate the breadth and depth of the university's educational offerings, in both the humanities and scientific fields: 40,000 students, over 1,650 professors, 12 faculties, 42 bachelor's degree programs, 46 two-year master's degree programs, 7 single-cycle master's degree programs, 50 specialization schools, over 100 master's degrees, and 8 doctoral schools.

Research activities involve 35 institutes, 30 departments, and 82 research centers, in addition to 4 other university centers, and are oriented towards the study and understanding of crucial issues for life and society: the new frontiers of economics and the world of work, the enhancement of cultural heritage, changes in the legal field, family dynamics, the phenomenon of mass media, the development of political systems, the aims of medicine, the technological applications of mathematics and physics, and the latest discoveries in environmental research.

Don Gino Rigoldi Foundation ETS

Active in Milan's suburbs, it is committed to promoting the social inclusion of those in difficulty; it addresses young people, especially girls and boys who find themselves on the margins, excluded due to social, economic, or cultural reasons from the possibility of having a life project, and their families, when they exist. Together with its partners it deals with training and job search, reception and care of minors and families in need, support for migrants and social reintegration of young people exiting from a criminal path, promotion of youth resources and active citizenship.

Through its activities, there are three values that the Foundation wants to achieve: relationship, cooperation and responsibility. The relationship is the human faculty of looking at people and building alliances by valuing and respecting diversity. It is also the main educational and social promotion tool and is, finally, the place where our humanity is realized. Cooperation represents our working method, convinced that only by joining forces is it possible to care for one another, as both the Gospels and the Italian Constitution call us to do. Responsibility is the conviction that in the face of the needs of the people we meet we must feel called to respond to the extent and in the way that is possible for each of us.

Cariplo Foundation

Cariplo Foundation is dedicated to philanthropy through its economic, project-based and professional resources to encourage and support the realization of projects that focus on the common good, the growth of people and the collective interest. Combating inequalities, especially by supporting the most fragile segments of the population, and promoting the economic and social growth of the territory constitute today the main focus of the Foundation's mission.

Cariplo Foundation was formally established in 1991, following the "Amato-Carli" law, but its history has a much more distant origin, in 1816 with the constitution of the Central Commission of Charity and subsequently of the Savings Bank of the Lombard Provinces. In that historical period, faced with the devastation generated by the Napoleonic wars, the intuition was born to organize a philanthropic activity to support the weakest and create the conditions for future development.

Since then the Foundation has been committed to creating value and opportunities for people and communities of the territory, through support for projects in the field of art and culture, environment, social and scientific research.

Every year an average of more than 1000 projects are realized thanks to grants given to nonprofit organizations, distributed through tenders, emblematic, territorial, institutional grants and patronages, for a commitment of about 150 million euros.