Province of Piacenza
The province of Piacenza is located in the north west of Emilia Romagna, south of the river Po.
It is a local governmental body which rests between the communes and regions in the Italian administrative hierarchy promoting the develop of the region and its communities.
The Provincia exercises roles in differents areas including social policies whereby on its territory it has the following functions:
- social planning;
- collection of the social-welfare needs;
- management of the Informative System and the Provincial Observatory of the social policies;
- approvation of the triennial plan that promotes the rights for the childhood and the teenagers and the annual or triennial intervention plan in favour of the immigrants;
- assignation of contributions for the building and the re-adaptation of its own social structures, choosing the priorities among them;
- coordination and promotion participation of all the public subjects to the realization of the social intervention and plans;
- updating of the Provincial Department of the regional register of social cooperatives and the provincial register for the voluntary service organization.
PROJECTS OF PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY
Territorial Forum for migrants integration: Forum' s aim is to promote migrants participation in urban activities in order to give their contributions in territorial planning through a mutual exchange and understanding with local administrators.
Local groups are created composed of migrants coming from associations or not, and Italian citizens working in local authorities, union trades, associations or not. Every group, during periodical meetings, reveals its own needs and edites a report which is shared during a provincial meeting in which every group, local administrators and all committed in migration issues take part. Political interventions after this meeting are based on what emerged.
Project “Partecipa rete”: promoted by Regione Emilia-Romagna legislative assembly. It's a pilot project involving 3 schools and 5 councils.
Youngsters involved have been trained on a specific issue (this year on human rights) to take part in 3 plenary meetings:
- In the first meeting youth representations has been involved (4 youngsters for each group for a total fo 32 ) who have echanged and shared their experience.
- The second one has focused on exchange between youngsters and local policy makers. Youngsters have expressed their proposals, needs, points of view.
- The last has been focused on exchange between youth representations and regional councilors of Legislative Assembly.
www.retepiacenza.it: Website aim is to create a network of public authorities in order to gather all information they usually give to the citizens. It has three functions:
- allowing citizens to have an easy approach to services and information of public authorities;
- highlighting even small municipalities;
- giving personalized services to the municipalities.
Newsletters, polls, focus groups are tools used to make citizens participation and information possible thank to users contribution. Moreover, a centralized platform will send notice about deadlines, service information and so on.