Southernland aims to put together the world of voluntary work (missions, initiatives of solidarity, re-education, rehabilitation etc.) with specialists (above all Doctors of Agronomy and Doctors of Forestry) in order to set up a process which brings knowledge, experience and concrete help in accordance with the principles of Sustainable Development, as sanctioned by the United Nation’s Brundtland report in 1987, and with the subsequent intergovernmental conferences on the matter. 

Among the various possible activities (provided for by article 2 of the statute- see charter) is the attempt to connect the university field (the Faculty of Agronomy) to the specialist one (Federations and Orders) in order to create not only a greater understanding of social questions (the formation of the conscience), but also to point specialists and researchers to those sectors which are increasingly relevant and more concrete to us today. This has also been made possible thanks to the recent university reform, which, through the mechanism of formative credits, has given a concrete possibility to our young, future colleagues to gain experience (a new technical-scientific formation) directly in the field, transferring to the “far-off” world and to the university world those problems and questions which globalization and Sustainable Development will make increasingly relevant. 

In fact, the project has been called – Science and Conscience. It seeks to make all the faculties of Agronomy in Italy, and all the professional specialists and students, more aware of these problems and more involved in them. 

The institutions involved in this project in various roles are: 

1. The Italian University 

2. The Regional Federation of Orders. 

3. The National Council 

4. The Southernland Organisation 

The different roles tend to create a model of involvement which form the future agronomists and foresters (and also the present specialists) in a scientific, technical and conscientious way; awarding diplomas and acknowledgements (formative credits, apprenticeships and curricula). 

The presence of specialists in places where they are needed is obviously a source of relief to those who receive them, creating models of self-sufficiency among the people or structures for rehabilitation-re-education (micro-projects). 

It is fundamental to consider that the first specialists to arrive at the missions have a precise technical aim (agreed on by the Universities and the Southernland association) which represents the preliminary base for the setting up of the project of self-sufficiency for the territory and for the people involved. 

Therefore the first inspection represents a great source of knowledge on which specific interventions will be based, but always in accordance with the principle of the micro-project.