The Città del Vino Back the Project "Wine for Peace"
Staff Writer - May 9, 2007
 During the next grape harvest the Italian municipalities which are home to DOC wines will organize fundraisings by selling native vines and local wines. The initiative is organized in collaboration with the World Centers of Compassion for Children, with the goal to create two Città della Pace per i bambini (Peace Cities for Children) in the Basilicata region, at Scanzano Jonico, in the province of Matera, and Sant'Arcangelo, in the province of Potenza.
The support and participation in the project "Wine for Peace", promoted by the World Centers of Compassion for Children, were announced in Buttrio, in the province of Udine, where the national congress of the Associazione Città del Vino (Association of the Wine Cities) took place.
The total income from the sales of native vines, and part of that from the sale of local wines, will be donated to the WCCC, the organization founded by Betty Williams, winner of the 1976 Nobel Peace prize. The board of directors of the organization includes various personalities, including as many as nine Nobel Prize winners: the Dalai Lama, the former Soviet president who oversaw the fall of the Soviet block, Michail Gorbachov, former Polish president Lech Walesa, Elie Weisel, Jose Ramos-Horta, Jody Williams, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Guatemalan activist and presidential candidate Rigoberta Menchu Tum, and Adolfo Perez Esquivel.
The cooperation between the WCCC and Città del Vino will better enable interested parties to raise funds to create two Peace Cities for Children.
The initiative of the Peace Cities started in 2003, when the WCCC participated in the protest against the project to store nuclear waste in the Scanzano area. It was then that it was decided that the site where the nuclear waste would have been stored would instead become the home of a Peace city for children displaced by wars around the world. Since then the Basilicata region has given its backing to the project, which currently foresee the construction of two locations. The Scanzano Jonico, "City" will host a Peace School and a center for the research of clean energy. The second location is actually ready to start operations within the monastery of Santa Maria d'Orsoleo, in the municipality of Sant'Arcangelo.
More events organized by the Città del Vino to support the project will be launched on the occasion of Calici di Stelle (Goblets of Stars), the national event planned for August 10, 2007.
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