The Regional Directorate for Communities (DRC), Açorestube and Açorespro presented on Friday the project "Azoreans in the World: Where We Are," an initiative addressed at Azorean emigrants and residents outside Portugal.

The Regional Director for Communities stressed the importance of the European project in the context of initiatives developed the DRC, highlighting the relevance of "social networks in promoting and disseminating the Azores at a global scale." She even considered their use as "an innovative investment that increasingly requires the attention of governmental entities since we are able to save human and financial resources through them," which is "what we desire in times of crisis."
 
According to Graça Castanho the "Azoreans in the World: Where Are We?" project is part of "a series of initiatives seeking to identify the places where Azorean emigrants live that are little known among us." The government official announced that the DRC is undertaking an effort "to strengthen ties between the Azores and Azorean communities in South Africa, Angola, Venezuela, Australia, East Timor, New Zealand and other European countries.”

The Regional Directorate for Communities "is developing other areas of intervention," such as "the Azorean genealogy programme to be promoted in Brazil in partnership with the Regional Director for Culture and the project to recover the Jewish presence in the Azores that culminates with the organisation of the "International Conference on Jewish Heritage in the Azores" at the Ponta Delgada Public Library on March 5 and 6."

The project concerning the contest "Azoreans in the World: Where Are We?" aims to identify the places where Azorean emigrants or their descendants live around the world so that "we may have a more realistic perspective of the Azorean emigration in all corners of the world."

For this purpose, we have created a page on Facebook - www.facebook.com/acorestube - where each contestant, duly identified, will send a photograph for publication. This photograph must be taken in a place outside the Portuguese territory - place of residence - and the participant must appear next to an internationally recognised monument of that country with an Azorean flag.

The contest runs until March 30 and the participant, whose photograph gets mores "like/gosto" on the Facebook page, will be awarded a trip to the Azores.