We need to re-active network civic energies to save our health and the Earth. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the need for good verified information, access to information and data of the PA and has required our association an immediate strategy. Our civic training school "CIVIC INN " is born to train citizens in civic environmental monitoring, the use of FOIA and how to best use digital tools for the exercise of citizenship, collaborating with experts and providing our knowledge gained.

Italy

The specific societal challenge that we will faced is to increase the participation of citizens in the decisional and political process of health and environment policies. The first step is to growth knowledge and civic engagement. How? We must activate citizens who are responsible and able to exercise their rights.
During the Covid19 crisis Cittadini Reattivi helped its citizens and communities in fighting infodemic. Our Civic Inn School continues its work of advocacy and engagement with them, also strengthening its network of citizens and associations fighting climate change, waste and pollution. From the young people of Fridays for Future to the communities that suffer most for pollution, Milan, Lecco, Brescia, Casale Monferrato and Taranto.

Our main audience are Italian resilient communities fighting for environmental justice, health, rule of law in their territories and committed citizens interested in making a difference. Also young people and activists of Fridays for Future. There are potentially at least 5 million Italians living in the most seriously contaminated areas of the country. The most dangerous for the health of the inhabitants are at least 60. These communities suffer from isolation, the paralysis or the opposition of the public authorities. In many of these polluted areas there has been a sharp increase of deaths by tumors with children and younger people as the most affected part of the population.

Our plan consist in three principal step:
We want to construct the new digital map of our communities in a crowdsourced process, producing information and journalism, expanding the network to make more effective the resilient communities. This requires fixing our participative online platform and website, dedicating new sections to environment, data, monitoring, transparency, chosen campaigns. This would allow us to amplify the concrete actions that each citizen, community, city can carry out.
2) We aim to train communities on how to access information on waste, air quality and health, gather health and environmental data and work on those data.
3) From the data gathered in bullet point 2) we aim to monitor PA activities, in order to lobby local and national institutions to take measurable actions to a green transition. We would do this through reports on public data, campaigns, citizen online assemblies, where impossible to meet for CoviD, journalistic investigative reports and grassroots initiatives. Outcome of such activities would be concrete proposals about changing the current transport system focus , from road expansion to alternative lines of sustainable transport; preparatory studies for conversion of major industrial plants; or again feasibility studies to increase tree planting. All of this would make local numbers and communities.

Trained and informed citizens are able to exercise their citizenship with awareness and hold institutions accountable.
With the development of the digital platform, connected to all MS, citizens, communities, associations, will be able to consult an accessible and complete site, a reference point for environmental information, to know the realities of other communities engaged in Italy and in Lombardy and the data collected by civic monitoring on issues such as asbestos, waste, sites to be reclaimed and good civic practices possible.
With the CivicINN school, citizens and communities will be more aware of how to approach the various environmental problems and will be able to act in a more virtuous way for the environment and to exercise their rights.

From our observatory we have understood that the decrease of conflict between PA and citizens on environmental issues occurs only through the development of transparency and participation in decision-making processes. To do this it is necessary that citizens are properly trained, able to find information and make appropriate requests, network with each other, using the best social media and digital platforms. All this has healthy effects on territories and communities by increasing environmental awareness and at the same time the engagement of citizens.

Since 2013 Cittadini Reattivi focused on 3 areas of work : 1) production of more than 10 investigative reports and two crowdsourced documentaries, hundred insights in the public interest on health, environment and transparency 2) lobbying activities on the Italian government, monitoring open data policies through the Open Gov Partnership Forum 3) awareness-raising and traininawareness-raising and training activities, promoting around 200 meetings and training for citizens, students and journalists across Italy on transparency, right of access to information, accountability and monitoring of public data with Diritto di Accesso Civico and with the scientific supervision of Dr. Edoardo Bai of Isde.

Personnel costs 20000 from team working on CIVIC INN School, engagement and information campaign on social media, transparency, FOIA
Travel expenses 2000
Technology 8000 (new platform and app for citizens)
Cost for Social Media - community platform - webinar 1000
Equipment 4000

Thank you for your feedback or questions about how our civic school works and how to enable best practices in civic education on important topics such as health, environment, and transparency.