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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.

This article presents the results of a detailed interview study with 113 family members (FMs) of people with serious alcohol or drug problems, drawn from three different areas of Italy: Ravenna, a medium-sized town in the North (n = 37), and two large cities, in the Centre (Rome, n = 26), and the South (Naples, n = 50). Interviewers used a semi-structured grid covering a range of areas, including the history of the relative’s substance misuse, family member’s health and well-being, coping, social support, and hopes and expectations for the future. Interviews were analyzed using Grounded Theory. This qualitative analysis of the data defined core categories, which allowed a multidimensional model of coping to be developed, taking into account participants’ motivations, thoughts, plans, and behavior. This model highlights the multiple reciprocal interconnections underlying coping. The results demonstrate that family members of people with alcohol or drug problems in Italy suffer in similar ways to family members elsewhere. However, although there are great similarities between these results and results from other countries (Orford 2005a), the importance of the family, both as a central theme in the interviews and occupying a key role within Italy, stands out, as does the role played by interpersonal and relational bonds within the Italian social environment. A range of areas are discussed further.