Hemispheres

Chiara Cariddi (also known under a nickname Chicco) came to Hemispheres from sunny Napoli, Italy. She has just come back from Turkey, where she did some voluntary work. During the training she showed her main qualities to be active participation in discussions, adventurous temper, decent amount of knowledge of where to go out in Paris and... she's just a cool cat, you know?

I asked her to describe what things she has learnt during the training and what changed in her life...

I hope I got some more concrete ideas about how to organise a local event (word carrier, apple game...). Moreover I learnt so much about Indonesia and Peru. In particular I found Dianto's experience really interesting and touching. It was also stimulating to discuss (and play) international trade system, debts, mining, people eviction all together, even with the experts' contributions. I think I became more aware of the links between the natural resources, over-exploitation in the Southern hemisphere and over-consumption/over-production in the Northern hemisphere of the World.

What are the things that make you feel excited? What are your passions?

I really enjoy reading a good book or watching a nice movie. I love travelling, having adventures, discovering new places and meeting new people.

Published by Anna.

LAURA: What do we have to do to make people react/move?

KARILE: First of all we must be inspired by idea. Only then you can spread your enthusiasm to others. I believe that people feel if you are honest with them, they would trust, communicate and follow you.

LAURA: What kind of questions make you react or move?

KARILE:Questions related to my personal experience and those that I have no clear answer, because it allows me to think about things more and enriches my intelligence.

LAURA: What inspires you?

KARILE:People are my biggest inspiration. Seeing a person who is very dedicated to things he/she is doing -- this is what inspires me the most.

Interviewed by Laura

Florence from Italy

I am Florence and I studied European law. I love travelling, exploring, and meeting cool people! I am fond of art, cinema and photography.

I have been a young leader and volunteer since 2008 when I joined AEGEE (European Students Forum). I am involved in European projects organised by young people with the aim of strengthening cross-border cooperation and understanding in Europe. We promote mobility and cultural exchange, recognition of non-formal education and skills acquired during volunteering activities. I believe in the AEGEE motto: “We Make Europe Happen!” for this reason I am an enthusiastic volunteer.

For me, being involved means to be engaged in civil society associations, and to contribute to make young people’s voice heard in all Europe. For this reason, I have been committing myself to youth work and voluntary work for 3 and a half years, because I want to give to young people the possibility to experience the same opportunities I had. Thus, they can participate at the change of the world. Youth leaders have the power to build a better society. I regard Europe, the World as my home and I am not afraid to overcome the national way of thinking.

To make people react and be engaged is important to make them understand that their opinions count and are valuable, that global issues affect all of us and not only unlucky people, that they have the power to change things for the better and they are not alone to do it!

  Interview by Delphine

My name is Sergio I'm 24 years old and a native of Milan. I am studying psychology in the “Bicocca University” of Milan. For the past two years I have been living in Spain, where I moved to play an EVS six months in Barcelona (Catalonia).

After this I started to travel to Spain as a backpacker working on farms. I love reading and traveling and I do as much as I can. I am also very interested in the Palestinian conflict having read many papers about it.

Involvement means for me enjoying when you take part in a project and you already don't notice time passing.

I think the best way to make people react is to surprise them attacking the stereotypes of the society which are very spread nowadays, especially in developed countries. I believe in finding some alternative to the capitalist system.

Published by Alfred.

I am Marco, I am 27 years old and I live in Sicily. I am Italian teacher. Last year I had a formative experience as a teacher of Italian language and culture for foreigners at the Italian Cultural Institute of Luxembourg (Embassy of Italy) and This year I received the 'CEDILS certificate qualification to teach Italian to foreigners.

1. What is your "passion"?

My passion is studying popular traditions and dialects. Indeed I for my final dissertations (Bachelor and Master Degree) I worked on these topics: I interviewed old people in Gratteri - a small town near Palermo - to make their cultural patrimony live again.

1. What does it mean for you to get involved?

I volunteer in an association in Termini Imerese (Palermo) dealing with cultural issues and music. I work with young people and mainly with people with "problematic backgrounds". I always try to transmit them my passion because I think that it is really important to avoid that globalisation destroys memory, local identities, important values.

1. How do you make these people get involved?

I would like to create a linkage between elderly and youth. For this reason I think it would be interesting to have the students interviewing old people in their town to allow them to share their knowledge in order to keep this huge patrimony alive

Interviewer: Chiara

What are your passions?

Perhaps the biggest passion of mine is being able to experience different cultures, either directly through visiting other countries or being surrounded by people from all around the World. My passion for other cultures and languages has taken me as far as living and studying in England, doing an EVS in Ecuador, learning Mandarin and getting to know Chinese culture in Shanghai, participating in an international youth festival in South-Korea as well as to numerous other travels in both Europe and furter. Another passion of mine, which perhaps comes from the interest for different cultures, is cuisine and cooking. I love spending time in the kitchen experimenting on new recipes and creating my own ones. Besides that I can almost never say no to trying new sports or practicing the ones I’ve done for years.

What did you like the most about the seminar?

It’s difficult to bring out something I liked the most, but I really like the idea behind the seminar, which is that we all had to come up with a local event to put our ideas into practice – to make a difference. I enjoyed the whole learning process and discovering new things about other countries. Also the experiments we did, such as the Word carrier, and also various games we tried, which we can later put into practice when organizing our events. I liked listening to and learning from various visitors, specialists in their areas, and discovering Paris together with 19 other wonderful participants from other European countries.

What have you learnt during these three weeks in Hemispheres, Anna?

I've learnt there is a lot of motivation in people and eager for change, that there are many initiatives and alternative movements that make a big impact on people, some wonderful people who are devoted to their activities and their work has a really big impact. Some of the events that happened during our training helped me realize how powerful our voice can be and that we do have the tools to make a change.

What do we have to do to make people react, Anna?

I think that many of our actions, good or bad, are often modelled by some external stimulations. Doing things for the sake of following the 'right' way of doing it doesn't really change the way we are. To make a change I think we need to go deeper, realize the problem on our emotional, spiritual level. And of course nothing happens without getting involved and acting!

Interviewed by Yorgos Kourtis

It’s the last week of our training. After days and weeks of learning about various environmental, social and political issues, we have finally started to make a plan of our own actions. About things We can do to make a difference.

Today we took some time to think about our local event in more detail and also started planning the steps of action to take in order to fulfill our ideas. After Claire’s tips about questions to ask from ourselves before presnting our ideas we came to realise that organizing even a simple event can demand a lot of time and organizing. Some of the more ambitious ideas were perhaps replaced by more realistic ones.

To help us with the tools and methods abou how to raise questions, start discussions on environmental topics we spent the afternoon experimenting three games. We had a chance to experience the life of farmers by collecting ´´crops’’ whilst being handicapped. This made us understand how important are the conditions in which people work and the tools they have for it.

We also discussed the origin of our food, what and who  are influenced by how we make our consumption desicions. Having the possibility to try different apples and try to guess by their taste, smell and appearance where they are from and if they are biologic apples turned out to be quite a challenge, but it led to interesting discussions.

Yet another full day of action is over and we have a variety of tools to use when organizing our local events.

(Written by Anna and Liis)

«The definition of natural resources – “all the things coming from the nature, without human interference” – is a consequence of a capitalistic approach and an view» (Dianto)

That was the starting point of our discussion today – right after the energiser•. This “philosophical” debate about definitions was followed by the presentations of Peru and Indonesia by Abelardo and Dianto respectively. Abelardo started with an overview of the features and the history of his country, underlining in particular the most serious problems Peru is facing (bad governance, poverty, social exclusion, low education). Then Dianto gave us some data and figures about Indonesia. He also focused on the main historical facts: colonisation, social movements, independence, dictatorship, financial crisis, transition to democracy. Starting from these facts, we tried to analyse the current situation in Indonesia: forest clearing, resources overexploitation (mainly mining activities••), chronic poverty.

During the afternoon, we played the Word Trade Game and started working on the Global Environment Problem Chart.

•Today in the energiser, we used the example of penguins to analyse environmental issues: with climatic changes, herons arrive and start hunting penguins. In the game, if a heron touched with its nose a penguin, then the penguin would become a heron as well. Time after time, with the glaciers melting, all the penguins would disappear (Lionel).

••The stages of mining operations:

a) People eviction (if they are “lucky” enough)

b) The mountains being cut off, all the dangerous metals used for the gold extraction are thrown into the sea

c) The soil is damaged. Companies share their profits and all the waste is left to the local people. 70% of the profits goes outside Indonesia. 30% (mostly the taxes paid for the soil) are left in the country. Only 2% (of the 30%) is shared among the local people

This report was written and published by Chiara, Karile, Lionel and Yorgos.