Leadership and female entrepreneurship makes a stop in Bologna

On 17th, 18th and 19th November, Bologna will become the venue for the international event dedicated to empowerment and female entrepreneurship organized by WomenX Impact, of which Eni is the main sponsor.

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Three days in which to know stories and strategies told by the greatest Italian and international women leaders. WomenX Impact, an international event that will be held from 17th to 19th November in Bologna, now in its second edition. Here will alternate testimonies and discussion tables that will induce you to reflect, to positively contaminate and to find unique content, transmitted and made by unique women. 

Eni is the main partner of the initiative, as a company that has long been committed to creating professional paths for women’s growth, integration and empowerment. In addition, Joule, Eni’s School for Business, will support the WomenX Impact startup competition designed to support startups founded by women or whose board has at least one woman. The award, awarded by Eni to the winning startup, will give access to the Joule Community, an ecosystem of startups, sector experts, teachers and innovation partners that will allow them to acquire skills and experiment with innovative methodologies for sustainable startups.

Joule’s mission is in fact to support the growth of sustainable companies through the formation of an entrepreneurial mindset and the acceleration of innovative startups operating in the energy transition.

SANITARY NAPKINS WITH BANANA FIBER

Rebecca Cenzato, a young graduate in management engineering at the Politecnico of Milan co-founder of MUSA, business project with social impact that participated in one of Joule’s programs and proposes sanitary napkins made from banana fiber for African women: «from previous personal life experiences, we knew the problem of menstrual poverty and therefore we decided to focus on this aspect of poverty”, he explains to AMMPE.

«Poverty is often associated with hunger, lack of health services, clean water, etc., but there is also this aspect that concerns women who cannot, during the menstrual period, be free to leave the house, go to school or go to work. We started with the resources available, not used, therefore at low cost, which are currently thrown away and not exploited”, she adds.

Those who work in the MUSA startup, therefore, discovered that banana plants are periodically cut at the foot in crops and once the fruits, all this material and the stem of the plant have been collected, they are left to rot in the fields or burned, in short, they are not does nothing: “In reality”, she continues, “we have discovered that from the stems of banana plants you can extract a fiber with which you can then do various things”.

Now the project is focused on Rwanda, adds Cenzato, “but we had studied the Sub-Saharan belt where the most bananas are produced, therefore also Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe”. The choice of Rwanda is due to previous contacts, but “our model is potentially applicable, with the necessary changes given by the place, in any place where large quantities of banana fiber are available”.

“Southeast Asia, Latin America are places that are absolutely palatable. We’re implementing a scalable and sustainable business model, with a positive payback in terms of economy, environment and society. MUSA is a low-tech project with a high social value», underlines.

For this project, “Joule’s contribution was important to trigger a series of development processes and to start working at MUSA with a more integrated and focused perspective. Furthermore, it put us in contact with an extensive network, whose great value continues to be tangible even today after two years of this experience”, concludes the young CEO of MUSA.

BI-REX PROJECT

Two young researchers, Greta Colombo Dugoni and Monica Ferro, starting from some waste from the agri-food chain, thanks to an innovative, patented, green process are able to obtain materials that can be used again in different sectors of the industry.

These are scraps that are not difficult to find, such as the peel of the oranges that comes from their pressing, the beer threshers coming from the processing of the latter, the rice waste, the shells of prawns or crustaceans of all kinds: «we extract with our process and then obtain raw materials, such as cellulose and chitin, which can be used for various industrial applications ”, explains Monica Ferro, interviewed by AMMPE.

Among these applications, he adds as an example cellulose, «to make a certain type of paper that can be used for different applications, therefore from disposable paper, which is a household paper and which is used by everyone such as: napkins, handkerchiefs, toilet paper, kitchen paper, to more niche sectors such as: bioplastics, pesticides for organic farming, substances for water treatment, in short, various application sectors».

The idea starts from the awareness that «people make projects», says Greta Colombo Dugoni, «since it comes from the union of Monica and me: we were working on two different projects, but we decided to combine them and try to work together. Initially we just wanted to try to dissolve the cellulose, which Monica worked on, using solvents, which I used for my work. We realized that we did not dissolve the cellulose but we managed to obtain it in a different way. So, the best way to get our trial is undoubtedly the union of the two of us «.

The two researchers met Joule following the winning of the StartcupLombardia 2020 competition. From that moment, they explain, «Joule has assisted us on fundamental issues for our growth such as the regulatory side (to understand if it is possible to process a waste and make it new raw material) and on the communication side. In addition, they included us in their community, allowing us to network with various startups and companies, and participate in competitions with non-repayable grants.

And, finally, “the constant support of the Joule team in everyday issues has helped us to carry out the project even in the most difficult moments”, they declare.

GLADYS KALEMA-ZIKUSOK, UGANDA VETERINARY

“I’ve always loved animals, ever since I was a little girl,” writes Gladys Kalema-Zikusok answering AMMPE’s questions: “We had many pets in the house and my passion for animals inspired me to restore a wildlife club wild in my high school in Uganda. I knew I wanted to work with the animals and help them when they were sick or in need of treatment”.

For this Gladys studied Veterinary Medicine at the Royal Veterinary College in London and, upon returning to her native country, was appointed veterinary officer for the Uganda Wildlife Authority: she was the first woman in Uganda to hold that position.

As part of his veterinary research, she identified parasite transmission from humans to mountain gorillas as a significant risk factor for these animals. Together with a group of colleagues, she founded Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), a non-profit organization based in Uganda and the United States to improve human and ecological health in Africa.

But Gladys Kalema-Zikusok went further and created Gorilla Conservation Coffee, a social enterprise of CTPH (founded in 2015), when she saw the conditions of the farmers who lived adjacent to the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park: «I learned that it was not offered them a fair price for their coffee and they were struggling hard to survive, forced to use the forest to meet their basic family needs for food and firewood ” she says.

«The social enterprise pays coffee farmers a premium of $ 0.50 per kilo more than the market price. Not only does Gorilla Conservation Coffee provide a market for coffee, it further supports farmers through training for sustainable coffee cultivation and processing. This helps improve coffee quality and increase production yield, ensuring that the benefits of access to a global market are realized by the small coffee farmers around Bwindi. «

Kalema was able to deal with other similar experiences and came into contact with Joule thanks to Startup Africa Roadtrip, of which Eni is a partner, and which between 8 and 13 May of this year allowed the six best African startups of the 2019 and 2021 bootcamp editions could learn more about the ecosystem of Italian startups and innovation.

Right now Gladys is writing a book that will be published next February. Her great desire is that «this book inspires more women and girls – and others – to follow their passion and break social boundaries and also inspire African leadership in conservation and sustainable development.»