On 11 and 12 October under the title ‘The Europe we want’.
The project, called ‘Better future festival’ and led by ELFAC through its European Network of Family-Friendly Municipalities, involves municipalities in Spain (Creixell), Poland (Gdynia), Romania (Bacau) and Italy (Alghero), with funding from the European Commission’s CERV programme (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values)
Alghero is the first municipality in Italy to obtain the ‘Family in Italy-Family Friendly Municipality’ certification outside the Trentino region and founding entity in October 2017, together with the Autonomous Province of Trento and the National Association of Large Families, of the ‘Family in Italy Network’. The latter was created with the aim of spreading throughout the country a new culture of support for family welfare and supporting municipal administrations in the implementation of innovative family welfare policies. More than 200 municipalities across Italy and about 20 organisations are now members of the Network.
‘A fantastic path for Alghero, started in 2017, which in Sardinia has contributed to certify 35 municipalities with the intention to promote family policies: we are extremely happy and proud that the path of the Office of Family Policies is solid and long-lasting’, said Mayor Raimondo Cacciotto at the opening of the “Better future Festival”. Alghero wants to invest in family policies’, added the mayor, ’and contribute to create a new approach, a new culture. We want the family to be an instrument of growth and well-being for all’.
For Regina Maroncelli, president of ELFAC, this project is the beginning of a new stage of the European Network of Family-Friendly Municipalities, which already includes 153 municipalities in ten countries. ‘To make Europe more family-friendly, we need to start by making local territories, those closest to the citizens, more family-friendly’.
The workshop took place on Friday 11 in the Parco di Porto Conte, a beautiful natural park, and was attended by Sardinian municipalities and thirty international participants. A good group of family-friendly certified municipalities from the island of Sardinia, exchanged their good practices to support families and young people. Local experiences were also presented by the mayor of Creixell, Montserrat Muñoz, and the representatives of Gdynia, Beata Nawrocka, Bacau, Andreea Negru, and Alghero, Mauro and Filomena Ledda.
Saturday 12 in the morning also featured a workshop of more than forty students from various countries, which ended with a declaration on the Europe of the future that young people would like to see. In the evening the city was filled with activities for children and families in the so-called ‘White Night’.
The second event of the project will take place in Creixell (Spain) on 13 and 14 December next, under the theme: ‘Europe of solidarity: welcoming cities’. The project will have two more activities in Gdynia (Poland) and Bacau (Romania) in the first half of next year, and will end with a congress in Brussels in September 2025.