Kairos S.p.A. is an Italian management consultancy company, founded in 1990.It provides an array of services at local, national and international level from a permanent staff of about 30 professionals, operating in the head office in the north-east of Italy in Venice area.

The company's range of activities includes the following:

• training for young people entering the working life;
• training for employed and Human Resources development;
• elaboration and Management of special training activities, development and implementation of

competence evaluation tools;

• quality assurance and certification (ISO 9000) for private and public enterprises;
• development of marketing and communication strategies for private and public enterprises;
• development of customer satisfaction researches.

During the last three years Kairos S.p.A. participated to several national and European research and training projects as the following:

• TEMPUS
• Budget Line B3 - 4113: Building pathways out of exclusion among refugees;
• Project "PUNTO GIOVANI" (Youth Point);
• Project Equal II fase IMMENSO - Social Entrepreneurship, Market and Enterprise's Sociality;
• Project FSE C1 Brainframe;
• Project FSE C1 A practice community for life-long-learning mediators;
• Research upon the development scenarios of the North-East Public Utilities, commissioned by AMIA Verona, 2005;
• Project Agency for Local Good Governance Italy-Balkans;
• Cooperation in the preparation of several European projects (INTI, All Invest, Interreg, Leonardo da Vinci, Twinning, FP6, Equal, EuropeAid).

Below we provide a brief description of two projects in which Kairos S.p.A. has been involved:

Project Equal II phase IMMENSO - Imprenditorialità Sociale, Mercato e Socialità d'Impresa The coordinator of the project is Venice University. The partners are: Kairos S.p.A., Sive Formazione, Forema, Ca' Foscari srl, Consorzio In Concerto, Consorzio CEST, Consorzio CSU Zorzetto, Municipality of Venice. The project has been implemented within the territory of three Provinces in north-eastern Italy: Padua, Venice and Treviso, where the productive sector mainly relies on a number of small and medium enterprises, but also on a great number of active cooperative societies. The University of Venice/Project Leader and Kairos S.p.A. act as `trait- d`union` among the business community, Local Governments and the Nonprofit sector. Business (profit-oriented) world often underestimates the capacities of nonprofit sector to act as supplier of services and goods, while public sector support to the nonprofit sector has only partially succeeded when it comes to real social inclusion. Main factors originating the problems are the following:

• demand from the business world and Offer from the nonprofit sector hardly meet, due to the lack of information as to the opportunities they can provide each other.
• The possibilities of business opportunities for the nonprofit sector in the field of the so-called public mixed goods as Culture or Environment are often neglected.
• Public Administration, on the other hand, usually perceives the nonprofit sector in terms of mere social assistance, rather than encourage a real integration of all social entities in a perspective of harmonic territorial development.
• In the end there is a lack of professional and organisational experience capable of creating and developing stable links among the parties involved: business world, nonprofit sector and Public Administration.

Partners address the above mentioned problems by creating a pattern of integration between Business (profit oriented) sector and nonprofit sector and by setting up a network system in which organizational tools and professional skills of mediation will be developed.

As to its goals, the project aims at the widening of a whole market sector by introducing new tools and opening new opportunities of employment and job creation, involving a new role for Local Governments and creating the key figures of `mediators`. As to the context, the project provides a good opportunity to further deepen investigations on the relationship and interactions between Profit and Nonprofit sectors.

Agency for Local Good Governance Italy-Balkans

The main objective of this project proposal was to contribute to the process of stabilization and development of the Balkan area through the improvement of standards related to public utilities (water cycle, urban hygiene, public local transport, energy and telecommunications) in some Municipalities of five target countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), involving in the process the Italian system of public utilities and local authorities, and relying on their distinctive competences in public services and their significant previous experience in the area.

The main objective has been achieved through training activities and technical assistance (training-on-the-job) provided to the local Beneficiaries - both local institution and providers of the services.

Workstations and specific software tools have been supplied, and financial support for smaller-scale infrastructure projects (Quick-start projects) have also been considered.

The development an Internet / Intranet system, with its strong relevance in terms of e-government, is a key strategic element among the proposed activities, combining a knowledge management component and a data base on infrastructure projects and related business opportunities.

In the future Kairos S.p.A intends to enlarge its range of activities according to the new challenges of the European strategy. We aim to develop a unit of Research and Development in several sectors as, for example, Corporate Social Responsibility; to continue our specialization in internationalisation in terms of development and management of international projects and to support the enterprises in their internationalisation processes.

Aleksandra Halina Kicela
Giuseppe Paxia Consultants Kairos S.p.A.