For a democratic knowledge society
As you may have noticed, a new graphic element has been added to the logo on our website, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale. This year, our organisation celebrates its 25th anniversary. This is an important milestone, which we have chosen to mark not as a simple celebration, but as a generative anniversary and a true working method. Let us return to the cultural roots of the Foundation and the thinking of Tullio De Mauro (Torre Annunziata, 31 March 1932 - Rome, 5 January 2017), our president in the early years, who wrote in the report on ten years of activity, the only anniversary that we have been able to “capture” and recount in a systematic way:
“In technical and scientific terms, recurrence is a logical process based on induction. A recurrence relation, a recurrence equation, starting from the relation of some initial components, allows us to evaluate the sequence”.
For De Mauro, and for us, an anniversary is not a date to remember, but a working method: starting from solid initial conditions, observing what works, learning from experience and progressively building replicable and improvable models.
A history built on induction
The Fondazione Mondo Digitale was founded in the early 2000s with the dream of contributing to a democratic knowledge society, but it has grown through a pragmatic, logical and inductive approach.
Year after year, we have experimented with projects, opened new paths, corrected trajectories and developed intervention models capable of functioning in different territorial contexts, with different audiences and with increasingly broad alliances. From the Educational City of Rome to the first digital inclusion initiatives, from educational robotics to job training, from campaigns for technological reuse to programmes for well-being, health, digital citizenship and artificial intelligence: each stage was not a point of arrival, but a starting point for the next. The long timeline that accompanies these 25 years tells precisely this story: a succession of experiences that are held together because they share a method, values and vision.
Reaching 25 years means taking on an additional responsibility today. Not so much looking back, but making the actions we have experimented with scalable and sustainable. The word “anniversary” sums up the challenge ahead: to proceed through cycles of learning, strengthening impact, expanding alliances and increasing our ability to influence the crucial issues of our time.
In particular, over the last year we have worked to build more solid foundations:
- a new governance as a third sector organisation
- a strengthening of evaluation and reporting models
- new forms of skills-based volunteering
- increasingly shared and multi-level planning.
Working with “many hands” and “many minds”
Over the past 25 years, we have learned to navigate with increasing familiarity between the market, institutions, civil society and responsible businesses, without losing our identity as a non-profit organisation. The solutions we seek today cannot be individual or linear. They need to be built with “many hands” and “many minds”, like legendary creatures: capable of looking in the same direction from different points of view. This is the profound meaning of our anniversary. Not a final celebration, but a generative anniversary that invites us to continue learning, planning and acting together.
