Help us to build a Europe for citizens

Welcome to the new newsletter of Active Citizenship network!
This issue follows the restilyng of our website. In both of them, a new design  and new contents built with the aim of supporting the development of civic activism in Europe.

Every day I learn something new about the capability of citizens to self organize themselves and to find solutions to general and common concerns.

Maybe a foundation for employment of disabled people, or a project to support young people volunteering, or even a campaign for the protecion of women affected by the breast cancer.
Europe is a wide space were people work to ensure better living conditions and more "citizens friendly" public policies. ACN is working to strengthen this phenomenon with its projects and with the involvement of a civic organizations' network. 18 project in 10 years: this is a significant result. We could work together with almost 80 associations to investigate the policies of different countries in participation and citizens' engagement. We have developed a strong policy on Patients' rights protection. We were the promoter of a new relationship between citizens organizations and private sector through the development of partnership strategies and of Corporate Social Responsibility.

The website and the newsletter aims are to support this process, to provide a space of dialogue and share experiences. We need everyone of you to get this spaces full of news about your efforts to promote consumers' and patients' rigths. We are absolutely open to all contributions you wpould give to us.

The first step: we are going to celebrate the 6th European Patients' rights Day with the patronage and support of the European Commission. In this occasion we want to demonstrate the positivity of civic action to promote active ageing policy. This is the reason why we've decided to collect Best Practices concerning this topic. Elder people are the most frequent users of Health Services all over Europe. The best way to guarantee access, quality and future to Health programs is connected to their attention at the protection and the empowerment of this citizens. Help us to gather the largest number of this examples, to make them public and to let everyone know!    

Teresa Petrangolini, Director of Active Citizenship Network