The story of  how we became famous

This Monday, we arrived to the next stop of our journey towards the world-fame. Undoubtedly we are on the right track to become the most renowned EVS volunteers of all time …or maybe not :)

As I previously mentioned in my last post, the award of Altropallone was organized for the 16^th time. Despite the fact that we weren’t the primary objective of the Italian media and we were not awarded yet for our great work at the association, we followed the procedure from the first line and we were even presented to the public.

“….Paulo from Portugal and Bence from Hungary”: beyond the shadow of a doubt, after the monologue of Michele, whole Italy started to talk about us!

Josefa Idem, world and Olympic champion canoe sprinter, even had the chance to take up a few questions for us, while Damiano Tommassi, ex-member of the Italian national football team and AS Roma, was begging for a photograph with me and Paulo. Though celebrities like us do not usually waste their time on useless pictures, this time we proved to be very generous:

The public discourse on two EVS volunteers, Bence and Paulo, has arisen: nobody speaks more about the financial restrictions of Monti and the bunga bunga parties of the notorious Berlusconi!

Now, a few words about the award of Altropallone and the award of Space...

The sixteenth edition of Altropallone went to Josefa Idem, world and Olympic champion retired sprint canoe star. This time, she was not awarded for her extraordinary sporting results, but her faith in fair play and the respect of the others. With her exemplary attitude she earned the recognition of many others. With her own words: 

“I always did what seemed right to me and I am particularly pleased to receive an award that does not remunerate my achievements in sport, but what I always tried to promote through sport: the importance of moral behaviour and the absolute respect of rules. Mine has always been a message of enthusiasm and commitment. Sometimes I wondered if people ever listened to me and followed my pleadings, but I never gave up fighting for the sport in a world where it’s an urgent need for those people who believe.”

The town of Cremona was awarded for its efforts to bring closer its citizens to sports (especially aquatics).The example of Cremona proves that the sport constitutes  the integral part of a society and it plays an educative role inside and outside the school. It’s never enough to emphasize that the sport is a lifelong partner which accompanies us from the infancy till the adulthood. The mayor of Cremona, Oreste Perri, who is a world champion canoe sprinter as well, perfectly represents the combination of sport and civitas. 

One of the most popular Italian newspapers, La Reppublica, was so kind to publish some photos of the award.

Now let the hard work begin!