The Arnaldo Caprai farm in Montefalco (PG), has been awarded the prestigious “Welcome. Working for refugee integration.”
The only Italian winery to be awarded among the companies that have contributed to a more inclusive society towards those who have been forced to flee wars, violence and persecution.
Since 2016, Arnaldo Caprai has begun a path of collaboration with Caritas of Foligno and other local associations involved in social work for the inclusion of immigrants in the world of work: over time, Arnaldo Caprai has given more than 200 asylum seekers the opportunity to find employment in the winery. In the last three years alone, more than 50 asylum seekers from North Africa have been given the opportunity to work in the vineyard during different times of the year. The collaboration has yielded very promising results as more than 60 percent of the immigrants who entered the winery have reconfirmed their presence in subsequent years, stabilizing their work position.
An activity that well expresses Arnaldo Caprai’s vision of social sustainability and fully falls within the UNHCR’s Global Compact on Refugees, which calls the private sector to play an active role in the management of the humanitarian refugee crisis through the implementation of integration strategies that take into consideration both the needs of refugees and the characteristics of the companies involved in order to achieve shared and participatory integration paths. For this reason, starting in 2017, the UNHCR decided to award recognition to companies in Italy that are committed to fostering work integration processes for beneficiaries of international protection. This recognition takes place through the awarding, each year, of the logo “Welcome. Working for refugee integration.”
“We are honored to have received this recognition of great ethical and moral value,” says Marco Caprai. “The sustainability of a company is not substantiated and is not resolved in the environmental and economic declination alone, because a business, all the more so if it is agricultural, and even more so if it is wine, is an integral and active part of the territory, a protagonist also of its social sustainability. In the last few years we have grown in size and therefore had the need for labor, but also the firm will to rely on clear and fair contractual practices, thanks to the advice of Confagricoltura’s experts, avoiding relying on outside firms for the necessary labor: welfare is an important and serious issue for a business that wants to be truly sustainable.”L’evento di premiazione, che ha visto riconosciute 167 imprese, si è tenuto a Roma presso l’Auditorium della Tecnica di Confindustria, in Via Tupini 65.
Having arrived in Italy on the famous barges, and then redistributed to the various centers around the country, those who have found their future in the prestigious Umbrian winery that has revived Sagrantino, “are young people who lend themselves to sacrifice, arriving at 6 a.m., many of them on bicycles, doing 6-7 kilometers, some on mopeds and, as economic conditions allow, in cars. They are an important resource,” Marco Caprai points out, “and they are often the best part of the countries from which they escape: many of them have studied, and it is good to see that here they find an opportunity, a place to put down roots. It is a story that dispels the myth of immigration being only a problem: it is not so.”
Work and employee training have always been at the center of Arnaldo Caprai’s interests. That is why the company develops training programs to develop the potential of its employees in the medium to long term and is also home to Umbria’s ITS agribusiness course for the wine sector. In the five years of the course, more than 100 students have attended classes at the company and worked directly in the vineyard and cellar. A dozen students were then hired upon completion of the course.
“The ability to attract talent is fundamental, and we believe,” Marco Caprai concludes, “that both training and social sustainability are two key elements in doing this. It takes talent to attract talent, the company is made up of people, and it is not only our wine that serves as our brand ambassador: our employees are the best testimonials we can have to clearly and transparently communicate the values and culture of our winery.”
