Penso a Te as an Italian Association

Penso a Te APS is a non-profit association registered in Italy. Its founding premise is primarily to achieve sustainable migration outcomes for women migrants through financial education, while maintaining transnational ties with their families. Penso a Te APS wish to broaden this training also to Italian women living in disadvantaged socio-economic situations or facing personal or relational difficulties.

Financial inclusion — equal access to financial services and opportunities — is a crucial component for the socio-economic integration of migrants in host countries and women in general. Since gender differences are a discriminating factor for inclusion, financial education plays a definitive role in the behavioural transformation of migrant women with regard to handling personal finances and entrepreneurship. Financial education becomes an effective tool to promote personal emancipation and assimilation in society.

When financial behaviours and life plans of migrant women in Italy are analysed, the transnational aspect of their migration is a core component of their lived experienced. The family continues to operate as a transnational unit of interdependence and source of collective well-being, in spite of geographic separation.

In 2018, the remittances women migrants regularly sent from Italy amounted to hundreds of millions of Euros. Yet, these remittances do not only carry economic value, but also have an important relational significance. To achieve positive migration outcomes, and the promotion and development of self-awareness in relation to individual and family financial behaviours, the cooperative promotes access to opportunities for savings and investments both in Italy and in the country of origin.

Based on the success of a decade-long experience in financial education by the Filipino community in Italy, Penso a Te APS collaborates with Italian and Filipino organizations to extend the work in financial education to other migrant groups, and transform the notion of remittance from a burdensome additional duty for women migrants to a long- term investment for benefit of the entire family.

 Community-based facilitators, identified within each migrant group, are trained and volunteer to mobilize their migrant organizations to take part to SELFManage courses in a decentralized manner, complemented by an introductory course online, as a further micro-learning support tool. The positive impacts of financial education for social integration through the use of remittances as a form of investment for migrant Filipinas have been documented in the doctoral research of the President of the Association, Manuela Prandini. The PTLA methodology supporting these courses has been developed as part of this dissertation research.

 Through wide-reaching collaborations, the Association intends to provide additional orientation services for socio-cultural integration, such as functional Italian language courses, fiscal, health and legal counselling. Through collaboration with the Universities, Penso a Te APS aims at continuing socio-economic research and working on publications to constantly improve the understanding of needs and demands of the majority migrant groups in different Italian regional contexts.

These endeavours, are  strengthened through the partnership with Nonieta Adena, as co-founder and vice-president of the association and Centeno “Dittz” De Jesus as leading representatives of OFW- Watch Italy. Penso a Te APS aspire to reach financial sustainability through membership fees and donations  and through the participation to funding calls by the regional local Government structures and the EU, in order to make the courses accessible also to the more disadvantaged groups of migrant women.