Volunteers in squares, monuments illuminated in blue and initiatives in schools … Italy will host over 150 events on Sunday, April 2, to celebrate World Autism Awareness Day.
The most recent estimates posit that one child out of every 68 suffers from autistic spectrum disorders, at times the disorder may be very slight, but the data has increased tenfold in 40 years. And families suffer isolation and a lack of assistance and adequate support.
In order to raise awareness on this condition, next Sunday, major monuments around the world, including the Empire State Building in New York and the Christ State in Rio de Janeiro, will be illuminated by blue lights, the colour chosen by the UN for autism. In Italy, thanks to a collaboration with ANCI, all major monuments and square in our cities will be illuminated in blue. In Rome, this includes the Quirinale, the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and RAI Headquarters on Viale Mazzini.
The Fondazione Mondo Digitale joins in this effort with Project MaTHiSiS - Managing Affective-learning THrough Intelligent atoms and Smart InteractionS, financed by the European Commission as part of Horizon 2020 ICT 2015 – Information and Communication Technologies. The technology and methodologies developed by the partnership research team, in fact, will also be tested on autistic spectrum disorders, too.
In Rome, the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, in collaboration with CERTH, will test prototypes at the Istituto comprensivo Rita Levi Montalcini and the Fare ABA Association to evaluate the system applicability to education and student and teacher learning and teaching programmes. The results of these tests will kick off the second phase of prototype development.
For further information:
Annaleda Mazzucato, a.mazzucato@mondodigitale.org
