Valsamoggia

in

Valsamoggia is a new municipality created through the merging of five. This pilot sees the MiT as a tool to support the creation of a cohesive and sustainable community conciliating diversity of territories, needs, services…

Type: Municipality

Population: 31.170

Extension: 178 km²

Density: 175 inhabitants per km²

 

Key Aspects

Valsamoggia has a twin pilot in Italy: Santorso. The two communities will work indipendently but staying in touch and sharing experiences, programs and possibly resources.

Both pilots decided during the International Training to adopt Sociocracy 3.0 as a governance model for their Core Teams. The aim is to give the group the best chances to handle diversity and share power.

 

Context

The 5 former municipalities forming today’s Valsamoggia have different starting conditions and territorial characteristics. Bazzano and Crespellano are more “urban”, residing in a flat territory, served by a railroad and with remarkable presence of businesses (some of which of substantial size).

Monteveglio and Castello di Serravalle are more hilly lands while Savigno is located in a very hilly area that experiences the difficulties of the mountain.

A territory therefore with very diversified environments with different economic conditions and resources. Among these, Monteveglio has 10 years experience in advanced transition experiments accompanied by the presence of the Regional Natural Park in the area. Under this aspect there is a large cultural gap to be filled among the people living in the different areas of Valsamoggia.

The use of MiT Framework is expected to help the process of harmonization of the whole new community and to produce a better strategic understanding of the available resources and opportunities.

 

Challenges

One of the main challenges we identified from the very beginning was finding the way for local authorities and civil society to work together. For instance, it is hard for both parties to engage in this kind of joint, synchronic activity due to lack of time. Also a change in habits, logistics, organization and so on, are needed. It will be interesting to see how we will solve this along the road.

 

Key activities so far...

Luca Vanelli was trained in the 1st tutor training that took place in End of 2019 in Italy.

Definition of the team that will be taking partin the Municipalities in Transition process.

A different way to start the process more suitable for mature teams using the Municipalitiesin Transition System that helps keep the energy and motivation up.

As a response to the global pandemy due to Covid-19, the team in Valsamoggia developed an e-commerce map and new ideas for a local delivery system.

A group created by the municipality at the political level: analysis of actions for citizens awareness about climate change (“Change the Current” and “Beware of the Weather”).

 

Tutor:

Cristiano Bottone (MiT Project Core Team)

Luca Vanelli (Junior Tutor and connection with Climate Emergency Table)

Pioneer’s Core Team: (LIT)

Federica Govoni (local administrator/assessor)

Christian Soverini (local administrator/assessor)

Valerio Betti (Cob Social Innovation)

Silvia Lelli (Municipality Councilor)

Flavio Azolini (FabLab Valsamoggia)

Stefano Caiazzo (FabLab Valsamoggia)