Portugal. Acting like a real community leader !

   

The project

Nhood manages 5 Alegro's shopping centres in Portugal. We want all of them to reflect the life of the community where they’re located. That’s why we regularly stage events honouring our neighbours and allowing everyone to discover and share new passions. That’s a way for us to make everyone feel good, want to spend time together and return to our shopping centres.

We want to promote local culture. That’s why we started “Art Everywhere”, a major city-wide, open-air exhibition to accompany the opening of the Alegro Setubal shopping centre. The artworks—murals and installations made of recycled waste—showcased the city’s streetscapes, history and charismatic residents. Forty artists and 1,600 inhabitants participated in the project, generating 247 articles and 25,000 new Facebook fans before the shopping centre opened and attracting nearly 245,000 visitors during the first week. Some works were donated to the city while others remain on permanent display in our shopping centre.  


We want everyone to have access to knowledge. On Valentine’s Day, we launched operation “Blind Date with Books” at our Alegro Alfragide and Alegro Setubal shopping centres. This event gave visitors an opportunity to enjoy reading again. In partnership with the publisher Leya and retailer Fnac, we introduced them to books without letting them judge them by their covers. If they liked the story, they could buy the book at a discount. We encouraged our neighbours to donate books. Thanks to them, we distributed over 1,000 books to Entrecul, an organisation that supports the social inclusion of disadvantaged children and young people. The 52 articles, 6,000 readers and 15,000 shoppers who took part in the event convinced us of its usefulness. Since then, permanent libraries in our shopping centres have given everyone a chance to deposit or borrow a book for free.


We want everyone to practice a physical activity. We do that by making sport more inclusive. We supported HandiSport for a week at our Alegro Alfragide shopping centre. At Alegro AllStar, visitors to our shopping centre could watch wheelchair basketball and meet the athletes who play it. It included free-shot contests, meetings with players, donations to replace equipment, partnership with local clubs and a live broadcast of the NBA’s All-Star Contest. The event brought together 5,000 wheelchair basketball players, created 15,000 interactions and reached 522,000 people on social media. Running was the main event at our Alegro Setubal centre. The local semi-marathon, considered the city’s biggest sport event, was even named after it. The runners picked up their bibs at the shopping centre, which was also the race’s starting line. So that nobody would feel left out, a children’s race around the shopping centre took place. Every year, the number of people who visit our site during the Alegro Setúbal Half-Marathon weekend rises by nearly 16%.