Bulgari underscores the essence of culture by advancing female talent, scientists and the youth, fighting the virus and enacting the agenda of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
Bvlgari strategies in the fields of health and education
In a meta-analytic review on whether gratitude enhances pro-sociality – the behavior that tends and intends to benefit others – researchers Lawrence Ma, Richard Tunney, and Eamonn Ferguson collected ninety-one studies of more than 18,000 participants on the link between gratitude and pro-sociality. Their findings evidence how gratitude and pro-sociality help to build societies, with the gratitude people practice affecting how they give back and driving them to pay it forward. Through its Corporate Social Responsibilities projects, the Italian jewelry Maison, Bvlgari, has been adopting strategies in the fields of health and education which, through partnerships with industry, are aimed at giving back to society.
When the pandemic first broke out in March 2019, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention laid out guidance on how to protect oneself from COVID-19, which included the washing of hands as often as possible with soap and water for at least twenty seconds. If one had no access to soap and water, the use of a hand sanitizer – containing at least sixty percent alcohol – was indicated as a solution to controlling the spread of germs. At the beginning of the pandemic, Bvlgari partnered with the Industrie Cosmetiche Riunite (ICR) in Lodi to manufacture hand sanitizer gels – of eighty percent alcohol – in recyclable seventy-five milliliter bottles. Together they have distributed over 160,000 bottles to medical facilities in Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom through the Italian Civil Protection Department.
In continued efforts to respond to the pandemic, Bvlgari donated a 3D microscope to the Research Department of the Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital in Rome, where medical teams isolated the virus in less than forty-eight hours thanks to the work of Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, Francesca Colavita, and Concetta Castilletti of Italy’s Center of Excellence in Research and Medicine. This 3D microscope has allowed the medi- cal teams to identify the cell structures of the virus and produce three-dimensional biological samples, following their growth and interactions with other microorganisms over time in a progress study of Coronavirus infections at a cellular level.
The Bvlgari Virus Free Fund
A financial program that has been funding institutions in their pursuit of research strains to achieve remission and cure different types of vi- ruses. It backs the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases and the Rockefeller University. Using this fund, Oxford University’s Jenner Institute offered Bvlgari Scholarships to Cameron Bissett and Rebecca Makinson, which will cover four years of each of their PhD programs concerned with the study of the COVID-19 virus. While Bissett will be focusing his DPhil on vaccine studies against respiratory disease – principally SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 – Makinson’s DPhil will focus on the characterization of the cell-mediated immune response to COVID-19 vaccines in the context of age groups and exposure to other human coronaviruses.
When Farah Naaz Fathima, Phyllis Awor, Yi-Chun Yen, Nancy Angeline Gnanaselvam and Fathiah Zakham studied the challenges and coping strategies of female scientists, they discovered the high work-related stress, poor work-life balance, and frequent work- place harassments experienced by female scientists from the analyzed responses of 263 female scientists across fifty-five countries. It’s with this data in mind that Bvlgari’s Virus Free Fund supports the Rockefeller University; a biomedical research institution that houses seventy-five laboratories and established the Bvlgari Women & Science Fellowship in COVID-19 Research for female scientists and researchers to develop new therapies, drugs, and vaccines. Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 – at least twenty-five Rockefeller labs concentrating on infectious diseases, immunology, genomics, structural biology, and other areas have redirected their studies to the virus and how it causes disease, with the involvement of over seventy-five female scientists.
Bulgari and Save the Children first Punto Luce delle Arti
According to the United Nations, more than 200 million children will be out of school and only sixty percent of young people will be completing upper secondary education by 2030. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) upholds education as the vehicle by which to transform lives, build peace, eradicate poverty, and drive sustainable development; a human right for all.
To help achieve this goal, in 2019 Bulgari and Save the Children created the first Punto Luce delle Arti in Ostia, a coastal suburb of Rome. Managed alongside the tenth district of Rome and the Santi Pietro e Paolo social cooperative, Punto Luce delle Arti opened areas for social activities, academic support, and free edu- cation, involving one thousand children and young adults, aged six to eighteen, per year in courses relating to the creative industries: including Cinema – in collaboration with the Gian Maria Volontè Film Art Institute in Lazio and the Greve 61 Association – with education on the theory and practice of the production of motion pictures; Photography – in collaboration with the WFP Photography of Rome – with a focus on the techniques and approaches to the art of photography from conception to final result; and Social Design and Mani Intelligenti – the result of a scientific collaboration between Save the Children and the Sapienza Design Research Center at La Sapienza University of Rome – with classes on 3D modelling, rapid prototyping and dynamic modelling for jewelry, stop motion and serigraphy graphics, small robot design, and 3D arts.
To develop the space, Bulgari’s in-house Interior Design team worked on the realization of the Punto Luce delle Arti, turning the building’s 1,300 square meter floor plan into a multipurpose environment, inspired by the convergence of light, points, and lines in Bauhaus architecture and Kandinsky’s pictorial research. The walls and floors bear the red of Save the Children and the sunshine yellow of Bulgari’s signature saffron hue.
Save the Children and Bulgari decennial partnership
In continuing its more than decade-long relationship with Save the Children, Bulgari has created a jewelry collection aimed at raising one hundred million dollars for the charity in 2021. The compendium opens with the Save the Children: 10th Anniversary Necklace in sterling silver, paired with onyx inserts and 0.07 carats of rubies. The necklace was in- spired by the BVLGARI BVLGARI jewelry collection, while bearing the Charity’s emblem on its underside. The jewelry line continues with another Save the Children Necklace in sterling silver, this time paired with a black ceramic pendant and a chain that resembles the form of an empty bobbin thread, and the Save the Children Bracelet and Ring, also in sterling silver and black ceramic.
Each piece draws its inspiration from the B.zero1 line and displays the engraved names of Bvlgari and the Charity. Over the years, Save the Children have reached over two million children and adolescents whose opportuni- ties and rights have been compromised by poverty, discrimination, conflicts, or natural disasters. For every piece of the Save the Children Jewelry Collection sold, the Charity will receive seventy-five euros, with each purchase guaranteeing: a kit for the construction of a temporary shelter, including hygiene products and tools, for families in Nepal; three months of professional train- ing in local crafts for at-risk young adults in Uganda; two months of professional training in the jewelry craft, the field of gastronomy, or the hotel sector for young men in Bolivia; eight medical check-ups for a child aged between newborn and three years in Xinjiang, China; and a set of flashcards in mathematics for children in the remote areas of Vietnam.
Sustainable Development Goals – United Nations
Throughout these initiatives, the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations act as a blueprint. Set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, seventeen interlinked goals aim at establishing and bettering sustainability in all its forms: from zero hunger, health and education, to water and sanitation, gender equality and women’s empowerment. As the Goals that form part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – signed by 193 member countries – the program helms the foundations with which Bulgari works, as the Maison interprets sustainability in society.
