A multicultural store in Southern Italy
19 September 2016
Its name is “Open” and it’s a new special store that promotes intercultural exchange between small foreign traders and local partners through work and social cooperation. The store opened in August 2016 in Reggio Calabria, Southern Italy, where there is a large number of foreign people and migrants.
The initiative was set up by the project “Open – many ways to the integration”, promoted by the intercultural association International House together with local organizations and with the support of Foundation WITH THE SOUTH.
The store offers job opportunities to Italian and foreign young people, who will manage the commercial space together. Every of them belongs to a different culture and everyone has different experiences, but they all share the same values: respect for the others, legal work, social and environmental sustainability.
The store Open will sell products of companies that have chosen legal work. On the shelves there will be ethnic food, but also Italian specialities such as the capers of Salina, the bean cottoia of Modica and local products such as wine and oil and even textile articles and other handcrafts.