Participatory planning and community development: an e-learning training program

The main goal of this article is to provide guidelines for all community actors on the acquisition of participatory planning tools. There is a growing need for experts capable of participatory interventions to act as social catalysts to promote local well-being and empowerment. Thus, under an ecological approach, 21 young graduates from different fields (architecture, psychology, environmental planning), public administration officers and social organization managers, all residing in Southern Italy, were offered individual and group empowerment training modules through a multidisciplinary training experience with e-learning features. These consisted of 1,500 hours of didactic activities including online cooperative experiences and field interactions directed toward acquiring participatory planning and community mediation tools. Our experience indicates that it is possible to promote participation and acquire skills through online training. Online training has shown itself to be a useful and successful tool for promoting skills in the field of social planning.