On 22 September 2025, at the Sapienza University of Rome, the Universal Peace Federation of Italy (UPF), represented by its Director of External and International Relations, Mrs Maria Gabriella Mieli, participated in the first coordinated workshop that was held on the topic of “HBM Project: Towards an Integrated Model of Sustainable Communication for the Agri-Food sector”. Thanks to her experience in tourism and as a member of two NGOs, she gave several useful inputs that were based on UPF’s core values of Interdependence, Mutual Prosperity and Universally Shared Values
The project “Modelling Business Communication with a Human(e) Touch (HBM)“ of Sapienza University of Rome, run by Professor Viviana Gaballo and Professor Marie-Pierre Escoubas Benveniste, has taken an important step forward in its research path dedicated to rethinking business communication in terms of sustainability, social justice, and equity.
At the meeting, which was held in Rome, at the Department of Models and Methods for Economics, Territory and Finance, there were representatives from different professions and fields of study. These included people from the business sector, NGOs, researchers, and professors from diverse disciplines, including those of economics and business organisation, law, linguistics, and sociology. They all worked together in this interdisciplinary seminar, to co-create an innovative communication model for the agri-food sector.
At the heart of the discussions was the analysis of the Key Factors that affect the quality and impact of business communication, ranging from transparency to the protection of rights, from intercultural inclusion to environmental sustainability. Alongside these factors, the first Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were defined to measure the effectiveness of communication strategies, using concrete tools to monitor aspects such as message accessibility, stakeholder engagement, and respect for cultural diversity. “The agri-food sector is not only about production and consumption, but an ecosystem that connects people, territories, and cultures. Communication must therefore become a bridge of social responsibility, not merely a marketing tool,” emphasised the project coordinators.
The results of the workshop form the basis of a shared macro-document, that will be progressively enriched with contributions from academic and business partners. The objective is to arrive at the definition of an integrated model of sustainable business communication, capable of guiding agri-food enterprises towards a responsible form of corporate citizenship that contributes to community well-being and environmental protection. The HBM Project thus reaffirms its interdisciplinary vocation and its commitment to building innovative communication practices, oriented not only toward business competitiveness but also toward the social and cultural value of food and the supply chains that produce it.