Il Faggio Soc. Coop

“Il Faggio” is a cooperative society that has provided students with hospitality and support services since 1981. It offers an ideal of intense coexistence model that contributes to the development of a mature personality, inclined towards critical, open minded and out-of-the-box thinking, to the sense of community and social responsibility. In Trento Il Faggio manages 2 student residences and 7 apartments. Since 2005 “Il Faggio” also deals with youth, social and family tourism and manages tourist hospitality facilities in northern and central Italy (Youth Hostel in Rovereto (TN) and Youth Hostel in Foligno (PG) Born in September 2015, NEST is the new college for university students in Trento. NEST is a state-of-the-art, unique place: it provides students with accommodation in modern, well-finished rooms and a broad array of opportunities for learning and making the best of their academic experience. Revising Anglo-Saxon and Italian colleges of excellence, NEST created a new, more advanced concept of university education, becoming then a project idea extended to all the university residences of the Cooperative Il Faggio: the CAMPUS NEST. NEST aims to offer inputs, contexts and tools that university students can use creatively to experiment as protagonists the everyday life and work environment, identifying and developing their talents in connection with the community and the territory. The living and educational experience is funded on innovation and continue learning related to these three values: sharing, co-responsibility, co-creation. The NEST educational proposal counts four main areas (Study, Life, Work, World) and an annual Creative Space where students can experience and share creative and personal ideas bringing their own skills into play. NEST also offers a Space for workshops (NEST Lab) aiming to develop technical and soft skills that include vocational workshops, international projects and the NEST Job Experience formula (opportunity for “guided work” in the field for organizations or companies, combining, on a direct experiential basis, training with practical experience). All NEST training courses aim at identifying and developing personal skills that go beyond the standard of university education but constitute an increasingly significant added value on a human and professional level. NEST aims to develop soft skills in learning-by-doing experiences in order to challenge the gap between theory and practice, smoothing the school to work transition and succeeding in limiting youth unemployment. (Area “Work”) Another key point of the NEST educational proposal is the international and European perspective both at level of information, relationships and trainings (Area “World”). We firmly believe on the importance of volunteering (national and international) and internships experiences, as formative experiences that can add personal and professional values to the students. In this sense NEST, in collaboration with the association AIESEC has hosted volunteers from all over the world for short periods and since 2018, in collaboration with “InCo”, NEST has been promoting Erasmus + activities: short term hospitality of volunteers, presentation evenings of university exchanges, international mobility and a project cycle training on project for individual exchanges. In 2018 this last project was approved and implemented in NEST. This formula ended up being so formative and enthralling that it is now part of the NEST educational programme. ESC volunteers will take part in the design and implementation of the training activities, collaborating with the staff and the guest students in a peer-to-peer learning logic. The volunteers will work in an environment attentive to the educational dimension and innovation, rooted into the local community and where the guest students are also decision-makers. NEST supports a way of working based on solidarity and inclusion values at both hospitality level and educational level. Campus NES