By Tom Cesarini

San Diego is home to myriad Italian restaurants, retailers and organizations. To be sure, our city provides an array of resources, not only in Little Italy but throughout the county. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a website and app that bring all these resources together? Well, we at Convivio have taken on that task.

Launching in January, Italian San Diego will be the virtual piazza for San Diego, an online resource that promotes our city’s vast network of Italian eateries, stores, and community groups. We are proud to present a digital networking and loyalty program designed to support local business while helping to foster unity and goodwill in our city and promote our rich Italian cultural assets. Our goal is to encourage the community to explore these varied Italian establishments our city is so fortunate to host and to create a famiglia within greater San Diego.

For users of the app, Italian San Diego provides a directory of businesses and organizations along with special offers from a variety of county-wide merchants. A robust event calendar highlights the local goings-on in the community, while our blog brings you all manner of local Italian-community news and timely tidbits.

To participate, we are asking Italian businesses and organizations throughout the county to offer a unique benefit to program participants. We are privileged to welcome a growing list of merchants into our network,and in doing so we hope to create a more unified Italian community in San Diego through our innovative program. For consumers, a simple log in with an e-mail will afford access to the resources and special offers. And perhaps best of all, the app is free to use for merchants and consumers! You can follow Italian San Diego on social: @italiansandiego. Be on the lookout for the launch next month!

— Tom Cesarini is the executive director and founder of Convivio and also serves as the Italian honorary consul of San Diego. Convivio cultivates community and fellowship, advances Italian cultural identity, and fosters multicultural awareness across myriad disciplines through education and research, social enrichment, and innovative programming. Visit: www.conviviosociety.org | Follow: @conviviosociety