The project "Parco nel Mondo" aims at resuming the relations between the Park territories and the thousands of people who emigrated from the Apennines
If until a few years ago men and women decided to leave the mountains because the incomes they could earn emigrating were among the main resources they could rely on, today the new reality of the Park offers new development prospects to places that in the past were considered marginal and lacking of real opportunities.
The challenge of the project is to recover the relations with those who left the area in the past and transform what emigration meant for the territory - a weakness, considering the loss of the best human resources - into a positive and significant instrument to recover contacts and relations both at a national and international level through the associations or informal networks created by the emigrants who live in other parts of Italy or abroad.
Appealing the people still living in the mountains and trying to encouraging them to open to the world as their parents or grandparents did in the past, the project has got in the pipeline an animation program to recover traditions, reactivate the social life of the communities putting them in touch with the ones who left, arouse interest and curiosity for a responsible tourism in places to rediscover but at the same time to preserve, promote a modern building recovery respecting at the same time the history of a specific cultural environment.
A group of young graduates is working on a research project on the emigrants of the Park territory, with the aim to collect information and better understand this phenomenon, but above all with the aim to recover contacts and addresses of those living in other cities or nations and could be interested in rediscovering their roots or the roots of their families.
The project includes the organization of special events during which the emigrants coming back to their towns of origin and demonstrating a strong attachment to their own territory will receive an "emotional citizenship", that is a social acknowledgement of the merit of those who, sometimes even children or grandchildren of people who actually left from the Apennines, are doing their best to maintain the links with their own land and try to make it known outside its own borders.
Therefore, during the summer, the Park towns will be animated by real "comeback parties" during which there will be the opportunity to know each other, tell tales and experiences, exchange opinions and contacts of people who do not come back from a long time, as well as to discover the opportunities for those who rediscover an interest in living in the mountains their roots belong to.
Moreover, the project aims at preparing a video dealing with the peculiar aspects of the emigration from the Apennines and the current development of the activities the Park is dedicating to in many fields.
Through television programs broadcast in our emigrants' destinations, the Park also aims at promoting the knowledge of the beauties and features of the places and the various possibilities you have as a tourist, traveller, or resident, highlighting quality local products also exploiting the most modern e-commerce systems.
For further information, please contact the staff of the project at: parconelmondo@parcoappennino.it