This is a project created by Telecom Italia to stimulate open discussion regarding major issues: the environment, sustainable development, biodiversity, potential synergies between different worlds and cultures, integration, building of peace based on knowledge and mutual understanding. This is a real integrated communication project that demonstrates the Group's willingness to promote dialogue in the country.
The project, which was launched as a blog in September 2008, deals with the issues of ethnic diversity and cultural integration with the support of outstanding contributors such as Mikail Gorbachev, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, Tara Gandhi, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Bob Geldof and Umberto Veronesi.
Since the beginning of 2009, it has also discussed environmental and sustainability issues in the broadest sense, aspects which are decisive in safeguarding the future of the planet and about which the community who voted for them, through an online survey, feels very strongly.
AvoiComunicare interviewed experts such as Jeremy Rifkin, Giovanni Soldini, Stephen Schneider, Carlo Petrini, Antonino Zichichi, Bjørn Lomborg, Colin Campbell and Mario Tozzi on topics such as pollution, the climate and renewable energy, but also talked to ordinary people involved in protecting the environment and finding new solutions. It also hosted many bloggers who deal with environmental issues on their sites.
During 2009 it attended the World Science for Peace Conference, with direct online streaming and video reports, and the UN summit in Copenhagen, with a blogger on site to attend the events planned and carry out ad hoc video interviews.
Solidarity initiatives were supported in 2010, including fund raising for Haiti (January 2010) and the "IO Proteggo i Bambini" [I protect children] campaign (November 2010) and environmental protection, including the World Environment Day (June 2010) which allowed 350 sq.m. of forest to be saved.
In September 2010, during the Riva del Garda Blogfest, a project was presented for the creation of the first film dedicated to environmental dangers in Italy, entirely produced on the Internet, using a system based on the Wikipedia model. The title was chosen from a selection of over 100 spontaneously suggested by Internet users.
Since it was born in December 2010, AVoiComunicare has been followed by around 2 million individual users, with a total of almost 5 million pages viewed. Among the services offered by the site, the Newsletter has 4,100 subscribers and there have been 8,000 simulations of the CO2 Meter device. The project has gradually opened up to the realities of the Internet and is expanding continuously. To date it has 11,000 fans on Facebook, almost 1,000 followers on Twitter, 290 subscribers on Friendfeed and a total of 90,000 video viewings on YouTube.
AVoiComunicare also won the Aretè 2009 award in the Internet category and the NC Awards prize as the Silver Best Online Campaign in 2008 and 2009, as well as being nominated for the Interactive Key Award 2010 in the Green Communication category.