Associazione Economia e Sostenibilità

EStà

EStà is an independent, nonprofit research, training and consulting center that acts as a bridge between scientific knowledge, policy and active citizenship.

We promote the culture of sustainability so that it can steer public institutions, businesses, trade unions and third sector entities toward a more sustainable and inclusive society.

We connect knowledge to practice and transform knowledge into tools for change. We study systems to make complexity accessible and foster collaboration as well as network building.

EStà works mainly in Italy and Europe since its inception, and has also participated in international projects in Africa and Latina America. The multidisciplinarity we apply to our scientific method is also reflected in the variety of subjects we interface and work with: local authorities, foundations, research centers and universities, associations, unions, public and private companies.

EStà provides scientific evidence to support policy processes, and disseminates complexity in a way that is accessible to non-experts. After a phase of growth and internal transformation, today EStà is strengthening in strategic partnerships some project relationships, particularly with foundations, research centers and NGOs. The goal is to share resources in both expertise and operations. In this sense, the evolution of the RUAF partnership is the privileged ground for co-developing EStà in a highly internationalized context.

The first seeds of the partnership with RUAF were sown during a walk among the blooming tulips near Almere (Netherland). Some members of the organization had their first contacts with RUAF even before EStà was born, in 2011, as part of networks and social movements on food sovereignty.

RUAF’s core group has always been a source of inspiration for EStà, because first of all it shares some fundamental cultural elements:

the local and participatory approach to global issues;
the connection between fieldwork and conceptual elaboration on ways of
understanding sustainability;
the cross-fertilization between operational activity and support for processes of
interaction between international institutions.

For EStà, this sharing also has meaning and value outside of strictly defined project activities; it is part of a sharing of intentions that have at heart the development and implementation of a common worldview.

The fact that RUAF is articulated into a core group and a strategic partnership spread across the planet is an important and unique model for us because, throughout its history, it shows how even a relatively small group can make a very significant and profound contribution to ways of understanding the right to food and the sustainability of food systems.

Publications with RUAF

‘Toolkit for the people’, empowering change through multi-dimensional solutions, Urban Agriculture Magazine 39: Enabling Multiple Benefits of Urban Agriculture, p. 66.