A MONTH AS A CULTURAL MEDIATOR IN NORCIA
Leyla participated as a cultural mediator and local volunteer in the two-month European Solidarity Corps project coordinated by Associazione Kora in Norcia, Umbria, from February 18 to March 21, 2019.
The project involved 12 volunteers from 10 different countries helping the local population after the 2016 earthquake. Volunteers collaborated with local realities in the organization of events, conferences, meetings, activities with elderly people and artistic and manual workshops with people with disabilities, and organized activities in English for young people and children.
This is her story!
Hello everyone: my name is Leyla, I’m 25 years old and I’m from Turin. In summer 2017, after a three-year degree in International Sciences and interviews for internships abroad that didn’t go too well, I decided to try to gain experience in my field by participating in a European mobility project in Kosovo: since then I haven’t stopped and even now I’m writing from Cyprus, where I started a month ago a volunteering experience with the European Bodies of Solidarity program. Summer 2017 also gave start to ” Europe for Solidarity “, a project of Associazione Kora that involved me as a cultural mediator from February 18 to March 21 last year in Norcia: thanks to this project, young people from all over Europe have the opportunity to spend two months in Norcia, employed in activities in contact with the different local realities.
What worried and interested me about this project was the presence of twelve volunteers from nine different European countries, housed in a container, in a country under reconstruction after the 2016 earthquake. I knew, however, that I could count on the help of my smart colleagues Agnese, a mediator like me, and Giulio, the project coordinator.
There are several reasons why I decided to apply as a mediator: among the most important ones, there was the desire to do something useful in my country, in an area where the signs of the earthquake of almost three years ago are still evident and, above all, to do it together with a group of young people from all over Europe. The month spent in Norcia was not always easy, with unexpected events and bad moods due to living in the container, but this made the experience unique, because it allowed us to understand and live, albeit briefly, in the same conditions in which many families in Norcia still find themselves. The list of beautiful moments is very long and among these are the lunches/dinners at Michele and Michela’s house, the games of briscola, the “chats” with gestures and laughter with Marina in the container, the stories of the days with the children of “Tutti i colori del mondo”, the afternoons with Marianna and the theater children, the Carnival parade, the Benedictine March and the day in Montecassino and Subiaco.
Among the things I took home, (apart from the delicious lentils from Castelluccio! ), there is the memory of the inexhaustible energy of the children who played with us, the sense of humor of the nursini and their curiosity about the volunteers who come from such different cultures, the beautiful view of the mountains and the trips out of town, the resourcefulness and desire to do of people like Marianna, Marina, the mothers of the theater children and especially Rakel, Raphael, Gabriela, Povilas, Tugba, Cengiz, Eszter, Gina, Fatima, Marta, Evelina and Samael.
I could write a lot more about this experience, but I prefer to conclude by saying that being a mediator in a project like “Europe for Solidarity” is interesting, tiring, enriching, fun…in short, I recommend it! And thanks to that, the mediator who took my place turned out to be Katarzyna, a Polish girl I met six years ago during my first international exchange in Germany and who now knows Italian and Italy very well: the world of European solidarity is very small 😉
