he “Albergo Etico” project was born in 2006 from the meeting between the brothers Antonio and Egidio De Benedetto, who manage the Tacabanda restaurant, and Niccolò, a student with Down syndrome from the Hotel School – Professional Training Agency of the Asti Hills, who was welcomed inside the Tacabanda restaurant to carry out an internship. The De Benedetto brothers soon understand its potential and begin to be passionate about the challenge of accompanying the boy to discover his own talents. Niccolò’s internship will be the first of a long series of stages and internships that were carried out within Tacabanda in the following years and which led to the creation and progressive consolidation of the Download Method developed by direct experience and field observation of young people with Down syndrome who approached the world of work and catering. The method is called Download because, as described by the official website of Albergo Etico, “with the computer term download we want to describe the action of synthesis and simplification of the professional experience towards the person with cognitive, sensory and physical deficit, as in an imaginary data download between operating systems”.
The Download Method, developed within the Tacabanda restaurant, was born from the direct observation of young people, their relationship dynamics, and the changes in them generated by work experience. Inductively, the observation of the experience of the individual children who passed by the kitchen and the dining room of his restaurant led Chef Antonio De Benedetto to develop a general method, based on replicable principles and rules but in any case respecting the differences between people and between disabilities: the paths of the children are in fact customized according to specific individual needs and experiences.
The SROI methodology is based on the identification of the activities of an organization through the application of an input-output-outcome-impact model and extensively involving the main stakeholders (Bellucci et al., 2019). The involvement of stakeholders is essential to avoid self-referential decision processes, as well as the duplication of the same measurement for different categories of stakeholders and the incorrect (or subjective) attribution of indicators and outcomes.
In addition to the SROI methodology set out in the previous paragraph, for the identification and analysis of the changes generated by Albergo Etico in its stakeholders, the following theoretical approaches relating to the analysis of well-being and disability were taken as a reference.
The SROI index describes the social and economic impact of the activities of the Download Cooperative and Albergo Etico on its beneficiaries and stakeholders. By applying an input-output-outcome-impact model based on extensive dialogue with stakeholders, we calculated that for the fiscal year 2018 the Download Cooperative generated a social return of 3.72 euros per 1 euro invested. As already explained in the previous paragraphs, a conservative approach was used to avoid overestimating the index. It is therefore possible to say that the result obtained describes a significant return in social terms.
