Ragusa Turns to a QR Code to Explain Organ Donation Before the Identity Card Counter
The Libero Consorzio Comunale di Ragusa and the Lega Pro Vita put five short videos behind a scanned code, timed to the moment citizens state their wishes on donation.
At the counter where an identity card is renewed, the transaction ends with a question: whether to donate one's organs. That the question arrives there, in the same short exchange that also involves a photograph and a signature, is the premise of a project presented in Ragusa on Thursday 1 October. The scheme, promoted by the Libero Consorzio Comunale di Ragusa and the Lega Pro Vita, places a QR code in front of citizens before they reach the counter, so that the choice meets information before it meets a form.
The president of the Libero Consorzio, Maria Rita Schembari, framed the timing as a response to a suggestion the consortium had received. Renewing the identity card, she said, is precisely when citizens are called on to express their wishes on organ donation. "It is therefore the right moment to offer correct information and allow each person to make a conscious choice," she said, adding that expressing consent is "a gesture of great humanity and foresight." Corrado Garofalo, president of the Lega Pro Vita, explained the mechanics: whoever scans the code reaches a web page carrying five short videos. Each uses a different register, and all of them invite the viewer to reflect before answering.
The videos were made by Gianluca Tela, and the campaign's testimonial is the actor from Modica, Andrea Tidona. The proposition behind the mechanics is modest: that a decision taken at a public counter deserves explanation first. Schembari's vocabulary — humanity, foresight, a conscious choice — is the register of a campaign rather than an administrative act, and the project's stated aim is to inform citizens before the moment they are asked to decide.
The project was announced on 1 October. Radio RTM published a second report dated 2 October which still described the presentation as having taken place "this morning," so the two dispatches are best read together rather than as separate events. What remains, from the accounts given by those who set the scheme up, is a small image of its logic: a square of code raised to a phone, and five short films waiting on the other side of the scan.