ANCIM: the Italian National Association of the Minor Islands Communes is an AFF Partner
Associazione Nazionale dei Comuni delle Isole Minori: (National Association of the Minor Islands Communes) is AQUA FILM FESTIVAL partner, and will award special mention for short film with “best screenplay”.The winner will receive a free holiday for two persons, on one of the ANCIM member islands during a traditional festivity. This will also be an opportunity to film a video about the island, which will then participate in the second edition of the AQUA FILM FESTIVAL.
ANCIM is an Association of Municipalities, established Giglio Island in 1986, and consists of 36 Municipalities, 220,000 inhabitants spread over 1,000 kilometers of land and part of the Regions of Campania, Lazio, Liguria, Puglia, Sardinia, Sicily and Tuscany.
It was born from the need to include the problems of the smaller islands on a national and European level and with the aim of creating a new model of economic development and social integrated between the Italian islands, but also European.
The Mayors were aware even then that could only joint action would help make the voice of the small islands and that a single act would not generate the same effects of innovation and solving insular problems. Even then, the horizon outlined in the Costitutive Act and in the Statute was the European one.
The objectives that the Mayors had data were not simple, nor easily attainable by small local institutions (ranging from about 150 to about 17 thousand inhabitants) and with different administrative capacities because related to the various organizational sizes depending on the inhabitant weight.
Furthermore, they were not yet ripe for a constitutional settlement also ordered between national government levels, and even of European government vision of a territory-based economy and for the territory.
So small Italian islands since 1999 have given themselves the aim of enhancing their peculiarities and diversity, and to transform the “weaknesses” related insularity into strengths through an integrated action between Municipalities, Regions and States also in line with current EU regulations.
The new challenges and the economic crisis put even more highlighted the need for a development model more regionalised and that has as its premise the sharing of choices by the community and its economic strength.
The island communities are entitled to essential services such as education, health, transport, water cycle equal citizens on the mainland and they require weighing and otherwise governed by the same services on the mainland.
The goal of cohesion policies can not just be to reallocate resources so as to approach the poorest to the richest areas, but should be to enable the institutional and social change and make the instruments more flexible use, ultimately greater overall exptation to ensure an overall sustainable development and a better quality of life.
The smaller Italian islands can boast an unique environment, landscape and culture context that can become the engine of the recovery of these territories.
