Microcosms to discover and to protect
By Cecilia Seppia
Arches, alleys, small squares, stone dwellings, local culture and tradition, a historical, artistic and cultural heritage as well as top quality food and wine are some of the treasures offered by small Italian towns that belong to the I Borghi più belli d’Italia Association (‘Italy’s most beautiful villages’), founded in 2001 to protect and enhance these treasure-chests, many of which risk depopulation and consequent degradation due to a situation of marginality with respect to the economic interests of the tourist and commercial mainstream.
"I was the mayor of Castiglione del Lago when I decided to network with the other First Citizens of small towns and enhance them,” Fiorello Primi, President of the Association, told Pope and L'Osservatore Romano. “Then, over the years, it emerged how villages and inland areas were a fundamental resource, also because of their vocation for a strong environmental protection, and hence the desire to make these realities known. Enhancing and promoting these places means enhancing typical Italian cultures and traditions; it’s an important commitment and one of great responsibility”.
They are microcosms of order and cleanliness behind which there is a lot of work, Primi continues: "keeping these small towns and the communities that live in them alive is our greatest challenge: the population is ageing, young people are forced to go elsewhere for lack of prospects and work. There is also the issue of services that cannot always be guaranteed: the general practitioner, the bank, the post office, the schools, everything that is needed to keep a town going. Moreover, by abandoning the villages, and the neighbouring territories, one also abandons nature and is paid back with floods, hydrogeological instability, environmental disasters of various kinds. Just think of what happened with the floods in Emilia-Romagna; that is why I say that it is necessary to rethink the development model."
The challenge of digitalisation
“The local inhabitants,” Primi further explains, “have a special aptitude for caring for the environment, they have it in their DNA: in these small centres you can really breathe the essence of being a community, there is greater sharing, life is on a more human scale, you experience connection with others and with the environment. It is a privileged dimension that could be used as a reference and model of that functional, working and ecological community that the Pope describes in Laudato si'.
The intuition we had and are still working on, is to push digitisation as a simple and inexpensive means of promotion”. To date, more than 100 of Italy's 334 listed marvellous villages have taken up this challenge to make themselves more visible to local, national and foreign tourism. A competitive advantage that has shown its economic return value very clearly in the very long 2022 season: over 60 thousand visits in the autumn alone for the venues selected and included in the digital guide, with thousands of bookings made with a click.
The interactive guide developed with MyCIA has yielded great satisfaction in terms of ecological conversion and new contacts. "After all, our aim in founding this association was to bring back to life and share the architectural, historical, cultural and culinary treasures of our country with a new public. And we have succeeded, if we think that today the average visitor to a ‘Borgo’ is almost 40% foreign".
Living with the environment is possible
Fiorello Primi says he can relate Laudato si' to the association's statute.
"Our mission is to engage in social promotion as well as tourism, making everyone cooperate in the care of the village and the territory, safeguarding its peculiar characteristics, its spaces, without pillaging nature or exploiting it but trying to live with it as best as possible. One of the 72 parameters we measure to welcome a village into our association is that of ecological conversion: from differentiated waste collection to attentive soil and water consumption. All of this is constantly checked and verified, and if there is any deficiency, we call the mayors and administrators for action to protect the environment. We are also trying to understand how to use renewable energy without disfiguring the land: setting up photovoltaic panels could be an advantage as well as wind turbines, but the face of the villages would change instantly. The right sites have to be identified. But we are working to create as many energy communities as possible. The important thing is to stop this trend of destruction. We are working every day to transform the mentality first of all. At the national festival in Lucignano in the province of Arezzo, which took place on 9 and 10 September, last year we wanted to leave a small but precious sign of our constant commitment to the protection and preservation of the Planet: we created a forest born from the most beautiful villages in Italy. Each regional coordinator brought a characteristic sapling of their area, we planted it and in the end we saw a sign of hope spring up in front of us, out of nothing”.
The Food Identity Card
One of the possibilities offered by ‘HealthyFood’ is to create one's own Food Identity Card: a digital document, to be received by e-mail in PDF format, containing all the information regarding one's eating style and needs. HealthyFood is the Italian food-tech company created by Pietro Ruffoni, a very young entrepreneur from Vicenza included by Forbes among the best 100 Italian managers of 2020.
The MyCIA app created by Ruffoni and his team has a single goal: to make life easier for all those who want to remain faithful to their eating habits without giving up eating out with friends. It highlights food intolerances, allergies but also simple preferences of products, raw materials or ingredients that one does not want or cannot eat when going to a restaurant. The App has now been downloaded by more than 200,000 users and has led to the creation of a digital package of services for the catering industry: chains, restaurants and bar managers, hoteliers - even establishments such as kiosks, bathing establishments, delicatessens, butchers, fishmongers, fruit and vegetable shops, bakeries and pastry shops.
A great lever, especially in a delicate moment like this, to make food and drink reservations and purchases safer and easier, simplifying zero-kilometre shopping or even allowing purchases from distant shops, ensuring the quality sought after to be received at home.
All 'thanks' to broccoli
"The idea," Ruffoni recounts, "was born in 2022 when it occurred to us to contact the I Borghi più belli d'Italia Association with the proposal to digitise the whole part relating to the food and wine on offer, which is, we can say, a heritage that the world envies us. I don't like broccoli, in fact I detest them, but I often came across broccoli as a condiment, as a side dish or in a ‘fritto misto’ and was forced to leave them on my plate. I realised that besides being an inconvenience for me, it was a huge waste because the food we discard ends up in the dustbin. And this is true not only for preferences but even more so with allergies or intolerances. So this digital guide was born and contains information of various kinds: what to visit, history, culture, anecdotes and then a list of bars and restaurants. The guide automatically translates into the language of the user, something which also breaks down language barriers and achieves inclusiveness. The benefits for the environment are enormous: reducing waste, cutting printing costs, engaging in a circular and sustainable economy. It is a technology that brings people together rather than pushing them apart. By opening the guide, the visitor can read all the menus of the venues in the village he or she is visiting. We have created a rather large network of venues about 10,500 venues have joined. In our own way we put Laudato si' into practice, I am sure that this App will change people's lives and promote the fostering of an environment for a culture of well-being, respect and no more waste".
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