Strategies to bring communities and municipalities together
Presenters: Cristiano Bottone, Luis Keel Pereira, Òscar Gussinyer and Lucia Aboutaoufik
Facilitator: Tommaso Brazzini
Brief summary: The webinar “Strategies to bring communities and municipalities together” will see four presenters introducing best local practices of citizens and municipalities committed to work together. Cristiano Bottone, from Transition Italia, will introduce the concept of “groups vs fluxes”. Luis Keel Pereira, from Telheiras Parceria Local (Lisbon, Portugal), will explain the way the local administration joined the local partnership association to improve synergies in the neighborhood. Òscar Gussinyer, from Resilience.Earth coop, will discuss about the bioregion of La Garrotxa (Catalunya, Spain) and the relationships between consortium, civil society and local administrations. Lucia Aboutaoufik, from 21solutions (Bruxelles, Belgium), will explain the role of thirds actors as facilitators between municipality and community led actions, as well as the methodologies used. In the discussion webinar we will encourage interaction between the presenters and the participants.
Presenters
Cristiano Bottone
His professional background is in the field of advertising and marketing. From 2008 he is involved in the diffusion and evolution of the Transition Towns Movement in Italy and in the world. He is a founding member of Transition Italy, Monteveglio Città di Transizione and Tipinoncomuni, a container company that acts as a platform for some of the communication, experimentation and social innovation activities in which he is involved or promoter. In the last 10 years he has collaborated in many different forms with many institutional subjects to promote, develop, experiment with innovative approaches to the issues of resilience, climate adaptation, evolution of governance models. He is project officer of the Municipalities in Transition project.
Luis Keel Pereira
After studying Cellular and Molecular Biology, Luís started to dedicate his time to a passion he was already pursuing for some years on a voluntary basis: improve the neighbourhood where he lives, by bringing together people, organizations and businesses. In 2010, he was a co-founder of the Iniciativa de Transição em Telheiras, one of the first Transition groups in Portugal. He was president of the Telheiras Residents’ Association from 2010 to 2013 and since 2013 he has been the coordinator of the local network of organizations, the Parceria Local de Telheiras (Telheiras’ Local Partnership) and the local media platform, Viver Telheiras. In this role, Luís is a part of the governance group of the Municipalities in Transition pilot project in Telheiras.
Òscar Gussinyer
Consultant, researcher and co-creative facilitator, with a specialisation in regenerative development, territory- and community-based resilience and participatory research. Co-founder of the non-profit cooperative Resilience.Earth and co-founder of the Iberian Academy of Permaculture, and co-coordinator of the Barcelona-based Earth University, Uniterra Catalunya.
Lucia Aboutaoufik
Lucia acquired a taste for participatory processes during her university studies in political science, followed by a master’s in local development. Through her experience in the social sector in Brussels and elsewhere, she acquired extensive expertise in activity leadership, mobilisation and group management methods, as well as an excellent knowledge of the regional context. A member of the 21 Solutions team since 2017, Lucia is in charge of: supporting public actors in organising and implementing participatory, institutional and citizen processes; coordination of citizen processes, in particular the training and accompaniment of volunteers; network coordination and support. Presently, she works as a coach for the Sustainable’s Neighbourhoods and she is involved in the VILCO project, focused on collaboration between municipalities and community-led initiatives.
Tommaso Brazzini