23 Cittaslow towns from 9 countries competed for the CHIOCCIOLA ORANGE Prize 2018. Seferihisar has been awarded with The Orange Snail with 5 points with the Children Municipality project.
On 4 June 2018 the Panel for the Cittaslow Project Prize CHIOCCIOLA ORANGE, chaired by Giuseppe Roma, Coordinator of the International Scientific Committee and composed of President Stefano Pisani, Pier Giorgio Oliveti, General Secretary and Luca Filippetti, Web manager of C.I., met to appraise the projects and videos submitted by Cittaslow towns.
Prize evaluation criteria were based on the general rules of the contest, assigning a score from 1 (minimum) to 5 (maximum) on the following four core items.
– Improvement of Cittaslow philosophy;
– Impact on social innovation;
– Relevance in terms of dissemination in order to share good practices in the network;
– Scale of the project, people involvement and investment.
After having carefully examined project documentation, the Panel unanimously agreed to award the Orange Snail Prize to Seferihisar.
The Children are Individuals of Today
The project approach is to consider the children as individuals today as well as adults tomorrow. This aim is perfectly fitting on Cittaslow philosophy. Aligning with this vision, Seferihisar Municipality created an environment in which resident children have the right to decide and intervene in not only children related projects like playgrounds, workshops and sports lessons, but also projects carried out by municipal departments like technical services and auditing. The Children Municipality is an institution preparing the children to actively participate in governance, develop solutions and express their opinions clearly in terms of developing the participatory governance, tolerance and reconciliation.
The children have a campus reserved for them in which they can attend to train after school in the facility including workshops, meeting rooms, mini amphitheatre, park and sports areas. The number of attendants to the Children Municipality is around 1000. The courses on 17 subjects include theatre, modern dance, folk dances, mind games, drawing, violin, cello, piano and chorus.
The Cittaslow Committee also prized the following towns in terms of their aligning various Cittaslow policies: Mehmetçik from North Cyprus, Yaxi from China and Wando from South Korea.