At the AMSES – Associazione Missionaria Solidarietà e Sviluppo headquarters in Fossano (CN), a small exhibition on the Cape Verde archipelago is open to the public, curated by Elena Ferrero and Giovanni Mortara, members of CISAO.
The exhibition is the result of activities conducted in Cape Verde since 1998 by a multidisciplinary group from the University of Turin, the National Research Council, and the Craveri Civic Museum of Natural History in Bra. Over time, thanks to the valuable collaboration of officials from the International Cooperation Sector of the Piedmont Region and CISAO, a fruitful network of relationships has been developed between local Piedmontese entities and their counterparts in Cape Verde. This has led to the formulation of several research projects.
On the occasion of the “International Year of Planet Earth,” the project “Understanding how the Earth works: from local situations to global processes” was launched for the 2007-2009 triennium. This project led to the creation of two thematic exhibitions: “Knowing to Coexist with the Volcano” and “Treasures and Secrets of the Coastal Environment,” hosted at the Craveri Museum and subsequently in various Piedmontese museums as an educational offer for schools, a moment of active student participation, and teacher training.
There was already a previous experience of working with schools and twinning between classes that had generated great enthusiasm among the participants and produced good results to share, the project “Perception of the Physical Environment by Compulsory School Students – Twinning between Classes from Piedmont and the Republic of Cape Verde.”
The goals were to develop knowledge of:
1. Anthropogenic activities, situations of social fragility, public health, poverty, and their interaction with natural processes;
2. Climate variations leading to extreme events such as droughts, floods, storm surges, landslides, and cliff collapses;
3. Tectonic events and the possibility of monitoring volcanic phenomena, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
The topics addressed are certainly global, all very current and important, with the ambitious goal of: acquiring awareness of the beauty of the places, the risks, and environmental fragilities; spreading a correct awareness of the danger to change behaviors; mitigating negative effects and increasing the resilience of the population.
Subsequently (2017), the exhibition setup was realized at the Auditorium in São Filipe (Fogo Island), which led to the Fossano exhibition: fourteen panels with extensive use of photographic images and two showcases dedicated to volcanic and coastal environments (rock samples and marine organisms), while various videos and photographs of landscapes and daily activities play on a monitor.
