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The Solidarity Call Center project is the brainchild of the Cardinal of Naples, Crescenzio Sepe, the president of the non-profit In the Name of Life Foundation , Sergio Sciarelli, full professor of Economics and Business Management at the Federico II University, and other illustrious representatives of Neapolitan civil society.

It was created with the contribution of the
Vodafone Italia Foundation
, conceived as a teamwork with all the reception centers, the Third Sector associations and the public and private assistance structures of the Campania region and allows to give an answer to the problems that, in an increasingly extensive way, affect many families and people alone and in serious difficulty, in order to combat directly and more effectively the many forms of poverty that are now so present and widespread in our society.

Through the toll-free number 800814081, it is possible to request a solution, an indication, an answer to the many daily problems.

The operators of the Center listen with dedication and understanding to the requests for help, providing all the useful information to the needs represented in the phone calls: a place to sleep, a place to eat, to wash, to heal, to fight addictions, to orient themselves in social services, to acquire useful information for immigrants, to get out of sexual and labor exploitation, from domestic violence, simply be heard.

The Call Center is equipped with a free outpatient clinic for specialized visits, a listening center with a psychologist, who provides support and guidance to health and psychological well-being services in the area, and a lawyer, who provides legal advice.

It is a rather complex and ambitious project that wants to give hope to all the problems that afflict the weakest, through the solidarity and contribution of many structures and voluntary organizations that operate in a network, to meet the desperation of those who find themselves abandoned and do not know where to turn.

Principle of operation

The Call Center works through the toll-free number 800814081 made available by Vodafone Italia and a group of operators suitably trained to respond to reception requests. The operator who answers the calls has a computer on which he must operate to enter the data and activities related to the request for assistance on appropriately implemented software interfaces. The information acquired and the requests for reception flow into the software tool that produces statistical results useful to the observatory of the listening center.

Technological Solution

For the solution, after a structural intervention of electrical wiring and network of the areas dedicated to the listening center, a rack was installed to house all the necessary HW, from the telephony equipment, the routers, the gateways, the server, the UPS group. An ESXi hypervisor has been installed on the Intel server to facilitate installation, backup and recovery operations by taking advantage of virtualization logic. Open-source technologies mixed with licensed technologies were used.
CentOS distributions, Asterisk SW switchboard, xCally SW for Call Center management, vTiger CRM for the collection of data relating to assistance requests and WordPress CMS for the geolocation database of the assistance centers in the Campania region were used as operating systems.

The activities we carried out were:

• HW/SW Solution Design & Planning
• Implementation of the HW/SW solution
• Ongoing assistance and support for the solution
• Support to the design and planning of future project expansions

Average

The project, which began to be formalized at the beginning of 2012, started in the design phase around May and June, in the implementation phase around July, ended in beta at the beginning of October and had the official launch on December 4, 2012. The project has been worthily disseminated in the media both on paper and through television channels and the internet. Here are some links:

• HANDLE
• TheMoney
• AgencySir
• NewsLatest
• Church of Naples
• EoloPress
• PeripheralsNews
• NaplesCity Center
• NapoliDay
• TheWorld

Below is an interview with the President of the In the Name of Life Foundation, Prof. Sergio Sciarelli