‘SOSpesa’: Service Design Leveraging Neighborhood Solidarity Networks to Tackle Food Poverty, Food Surplus, and Sustainability of Local Commerce

This paper illustrates a project to redesign a charitable initiative against food poverty into an innovative solution called "SOSpesa", implemented in a neighborhood of the city of Milan named NoLo - North of Loreto. The paper outlines approach, methodology and strategy to move from an activist initiative to a service with more than charitable purposes and outlines the new service configuration in its opportunities and limitations as emerged from the pilot project. It focuses on strategies to harness a network of neighborhood actors to achieve a goal of solidarity, combating food waste and supporting local shops. Based on the assumption that the local context is a strength of the service, the project activated a wide range of actors, from volunteers to third sector organizations and businesses, under the coordination of a team of researchers, to experiment with different service configurations in search of overall sustainability. Finally, the paper discusses design strategies for scaling up grassroots social innovation through replicability, not to distort its spirit and bottom-up engagement.