Desire

It takes an instant to get passionated. Without control. it just happens. It takes years, day after day to explore it, let this feeling flow into you. It takes courage to step up and stand for actions passion driven. It takes sacrifices, social interactions and moments of celebration to feel you are moving towards your purpose.
It can take one conversation to change your life. After all, it might not be up to you to draw what’s going to be next.

It’s up to you to choose to believe:
1.However it goes, is going to be the best thing that can happen
2.If is not an happy ending, is not the end.

I choose to believe it, and start unleash my desires, focus on them and formulate wishes around them to draw the next step.

To realize your wishes is considered a non-negotiable condition while looking for happiness. As a paradox, we live the sunset of desire. Desire is today a used and abused word. We look more comfortable with desiring, more free. In reality this freedom overlaps with caprice, because it refuses every responsibility. The freedom of caprices without limits is not related with the desire. To desire is a must, a due, a vocation. In front of my desire I am always in a position of responsibility. What will I do with it?

We might assist to the desire of enjoy, characterized by a move to consume, to strive for a stronger emotion, to look for something new. The paradox is that this desire does not generate any satisfaction.  We end up being compressed in a rush to joy without relationships, without words, without feelings. It seems that we desire without love, because love needs connections and limits to freedom.
We allude ourself to be in a reality owned by me, myself and I.
What is this ends up being proved wrong and fool?
Authentic freedom is not to deny to be dependent from someone, rather its assumption.

This is why the lesson of desire is important. Desire remembers us that we are not complete, but there’s something we miss. We are nurtured by the desire of who lives next to us.

Lancan used to write: “Human desire is the desire of the other”.
Our desire needs to stay, to remember us that style is singular and unrepeatable.
This is why the desire is always against conformism. At the same time, to maintain relationships we need a space for loneliness and our beauty.
We might need to give back authority to diversity to rebuild our living together, the common good and the community.
Can the ethic of sobriety really become the antidote to  consumeristic bulimia?
It might not, since as human beings we need to dream, not just to do sacrifices, renounces, follow rules.
Our personal growth does not relate with our ability to sacrifice and be disciplined. At least this is not all. It relates with impulse, creativity, planning.
The desire names this attitude of humans to overcome the existent, challenge the status quo, look for a new horizon.

I am on my road, desiring to build my future. And this time is going to be in 2.

 

No ethic without aesthetic

No ethic without aesthetic [Soren Kierkegaard]

Since the most ancient time, the easiest way to transmit knowledge and pass concept has been to invent legends and stories. They allow our brain to connect experiences and concrete images to abstract and moral concepts. This application is made following the same principle, because we struggle to communicate what AIESEC is in simple ways, and I believe telling stories can make the difference. When Walt Disney has said “It’s kind of Fun to do the impossible” he meant exactly the process of inventing funny, simple, accessible ways to represent what would have needed so many more words to be told. And by doing it he has impacted the life of billions of children all over the world. In each page there are images of cartoons representing stories with a message from each continent. I have chosen them because storytelling is about human being, to make it effective is a matter of targeting the audience and customize the message accordingly. Next to the image there’s a small text in grey to make sure that even if you are not Disney’s customer you are getting the message.
No ethics without aesthetics is part of Kierkegaard’s manifesto of existentialism. He used this statement to explain that there cannot be real beauty without ethics and values. Companies and organisations must facilitate, educate, inspire an ethical message to meet the needs of tomorrow’s emotional consumers. AIESEC can move closer to 2015 by promoting value-driven impact to young people through experiences that we deliver to them and to the society. We can differentiate our organization thanks to our showcased values.

to know more:

http://sg.sg/zdBF1e

https://sites.google.com/a/aiesec.net/ai1213electionselection/

 

Now WOW

What is NOW WOW?
NOW WOW is the feeling of looking at the sunshine after a raining day. NOW WOW is the emotion of Painting, imaging portraits of excellence. NOW WOW is staying open mouth in front of 30/30 with mention. NOW WOW is run until the top of a mountain and breathtaking feeling the king of the world.

NOW WOW is ACT to create our own Word Of Wonderfull, NOW is about us to make it WOW. NOW is the time to MAKE TODAY MATTER. NOW is the time to make something unique every day. WOW is for people who are special.

We want to be the one to create NOW WOW époque. We want to be the leader of WOW, from NOW on. [freely edited from aiesecitaly.blogspot.com]

Debre Zeit, Ethiopia Jan 2011

Sunshine. Hot weather. Roads are grounded and mostly travelled by horseriden carts. Immediately out of the street immense landscapes of grass, thef, fla. At the end some green hills. Welcome to the Ethiopian Countryside. Houses in town are mostly one floor tall, few rooms with multiple uses; kitchen, living room, sleeping space. The difference with the one in the countryside out of towns and villages is that here they mostly have power and water flowing. Some new part of the city are being constructed as the main zones of Addis with condominiums. The country is growing, very fast, according to someone even too much fast, and as it grows goes higher.

We are travelling to a resort, supposed to be a very fancy and expensive place for a business meeting. We have been picked up and reached the place. Three G house and in front a big space totally sandy. Around just fields and some trees. ” We are plannign to have a swimming pool”.

6 Months before, Addis Ababa, Gothera Condominium, AIESEC Ethiopia MC house:

Arianna has just arrived from Rome, she will live with us for the next 2 months. I strongly want to make her feeling confortable and avoid her any cultural shock. Our compound is probably the safest place of the city, and at the end one of the most expensive, compared to Ethiopian standards. But very far to be comparabel with fancy houses of internationals. Gothera is a new place of Addis and even if the houses are ready, the gardens in between are still to be set, and it will be up to the neighbours

“Ari, don’t worry, ONE DAY THERE WILL BE A GREEN GARDEN”

ADDIS ABABA - GOTHERA MC HOUSE

I might be wrong, but I kind of feel the same way she did.

Our meeting will be inside. We move to discover the place, without any expectations.

And here is when knew we were wrong, and we felt amazed.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.248778025195424.59915.100001896862547&type=3

I started writing this blog after having delivered a speech to a whole plenary of youth, talking about the fact that “the essential is invisible to eyes”. [Antoine de Saint Exupery - Le Petit Prince]

Delivering that speech has marked the turning point of my life and has probably been the very beginning of my trip to Ethiopia. I am back to it. Now. WoW.

 

 

 

it’s christmas’ time [in Addis]

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
[John 1, 1:14]

Brescia, 8th December – every year of my life
Holidays time. Winter. The weather is usually super cold, days are short, nights are foggy and icy. Today Xmas atmosphere comes to the city and in the family. For Christian is the celebration of Virgo Mary born without faults. We are at home, and I am building the representation of Jesus’ birth. There are shepherds, sheep, the small lake, craftsman, the star, the donkey and the ox. There are Saint Mary, Saint Joseph. Jesus is apart, alone, waiting. we will put it there the 24th night when the church bells will start ringing.

Addis Ababa, 24th December 2011
Xmas Mass. The reader is proclaiming the Verb. Darkness. unexpectedly, power is off. All around is dark, no lights, no microphone. In few seconds a candel is enlighten, and brought to the reader. All around is silent. The reader continues. In a short while everything is set, and the Mass goes on smoothly.
Is the second time in my all life I am attending a Mass in English, and for the main part of it I don’t really know how does the prayers sound like. But Listening to them I start realizing their meaning, and I feel they make sense to my life.

Every year I have gone to the Christmas Mass, even to more then one to sing, direct the choir, just attend the Mass, be there with some relatives. I have heard these words so many times. I never listened to them the same way I did tonight.
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

After this Christmas’ Mass I had no xmas dinner, just some lentils left from lunch, and the usual tea. There was no family, no snow, no nativity in the house neither xmas tree. Just the trial of watching some xmas movie with the people that are currently my family in the other side of the world. No Panettone or Pandoro. The only supermarkets selling them are offering 350 Birr price [15 €]. The price of 1 week food, almost the salary of the main part of low qualified workers.

But after this Christmas’ Mass I received a short video from somewhere in Europe.
Super Sweet, as the chocolate that I did not receive, as the 2 candies Sam gave me in replace.
After this Christmas’ Mass I have appreciated having time to be spent with interesting people. I have discussed big issues of the world: peace, the meaning of democracy, the reasons behind international cooperation policies, the right of intrusion or invasion of some countries into others. And the reasons why this right is never used in specific part of the world, as Eritrea, or Somalia, or South Sudan.
I have done it while watching  Ethiopian youth cooking some traditional food, shiro and injera, to feed homeless. I have done it with them, and it was the very first time for almost all of us. Surprisingly. If I need to sum up my christmas’ in Addis I would quote one of this youth approaching me to confess “at the end, is so easy to donate a smile to a child, Why haven’t I done it before?”

Nairobi, August 2011
500 youth leaders, gathered in one place for AIESEC International Congress 2011.
on the screen one question: What do you stand for?”
“I stand for every child of the world to have the right to smile”.

Now my journey of a thousands mile has started, with the 1st small step. In the right direction.

Merry Christmas’.

 

Happy Birthday

Every experience we live is meant to leave us something.

Smile. Life is the best experience we coudl have ever dreamt of.

[video: courtesy of MC experience AIESEC Italy 10/11]

 

University & AIESEC – stories of success

EiABC, Addis Ababa, Jan 2012
Sitting in a fancy house, african design, european order. WIth me 3 ethiopian students, one AIESEC teammate, the Managing Director of the Ethiopian institute or Architecture, Building Construction, City Development. Purpose of the meeting: Define policies and framework for students involvement in university activity. Goal: make the campus becoming a benchmark for the all universities in Africa. Ambitious, awesome.
AIESEC is present in the university to offer international internship and volunteering opportunities to ethiopian students and to expose them to an international environment through a platform aiming to empower youth to develop socially impacting projects for their community. We sit there to use our experience as a driver and consult them on how to excel. But mostly we sit there because we want AIESEC to  engage every young person in the world. And the University is a good starting point ; )

UCSC, Milano 16th Nov 2011
110/110 cum Laude – UCSC Milano
What this has meant to me?
Be curious, Learn; know people; rush; forget to have week-ends; have 28/30 as the minimum standard, 30/30 as an average, compromise on it; be happy; be tired; be interested; engage; raise my hand; spend 4 hours in the train, everyday; loose the train, study on the train; study; repeat, Draw maps; explain and support; give back to my family, hope to spend time on something useful, create idea, network, volunteer; Be an AIESECer. Rebuild a Local Chapter, offer opportunities, grow personally, be ambitious, dream big, achieve bigger; discover people; understand the value of friendship; work, work, work; be popular; Leave, live in Ethiopia, study every night, Hope, be interested, Be Graduated. Have a piece of paper stating the result of all these: 110/110 cum Laude.

 

My Creative Visualisation for 2012

 

Business on the edge of Social Impact

Adama, Ethiopia 3rd Jan 2012
“Please welcome with a  clap our special guest Lecturer, Miss Elena Gaffurini, from Italy” [yes, even if I leave in Ethiopia since 6 months, even if they invited me because of my work with AIESEC in Ethiopia, being a Guest Lecturer in the University I am someone because I come from Italy, the country of Entrepreneurs]. I graduated 2 months ago, I am working for a no-profit and for the University. I am not an entrepreneur. Not yet, Not formally, at least. What does that mean to be entrepreneur?

I challenge my plenary. 200 Ethiopian students, mostly from business faculty. They are part of the class following a specific course on entrepreneurship. They have already gone through how to create a business plan, how to target the market, how to transform an idea in an enterprise. Now they are eager to listen to successful stories from the world and from my experience.
What makes an entrepreneur successful?

On my way to Adama, traveling with a minibus. Around the road yellow fields, cows, donkeys, children running back from school carrying a small notebook in their hands. From mile to mile some small houses made of mad and dried theft. Welcome to the Ethiopian Countryside.
On My way to Adama I realized that I don’t really care about telling them successful stories of entrepreneurs from Italy or successful stories of business that I can download form Internet. For that, I can just give them the file with a list of interesting links.

What does Ethiopia need is to have Entrepreneur coming out of Ethiopian youth, developing business ideas for their country, for their society.
And to do it successfully there’s not really much I can teach them. There’s much more I can do inspiring them to take action, to actually do something about their dreams. To find out the reason why they want to do it. To present them the concept of capitalizing on other’s ideas to create strategic partnership to scale up their operations and their impact. To consider an enterprise as the most effective way to solve social problem. To consider AIESEC, the organization I work for, as a platform to support them in doing it and as the most accessible way to get an international mindset, develop leadership and managerial skills while they still are students and create their own network of organizations and youth.

I had 3 questions:
What is your biggest dream?
What is your society calling you for?
What do you want do to about it?

I asked them to divide in groups, draw a presentation of their business idea addressing a social need, proposing their target of costumers, identifying their value proposition and their revenue stream.

And then I ask them to stand up to share it to the others.
Business on the edge of Social Impact

It came out that the main part of their ideas where strictly linked with the Social Development Project AIESEC is developing in Addis with the youth already involved. It came up that I am not in this country because of money, that I am actually not getting any money to do what I do. It came up that yes, we can choose if to make something good, or if to make money. And we can also choose both. What matters the most is that we, as youth, as future leaders, as potential entrepreneur, we do what we do because we have a dream and a vision about it.

 

World HIV Day

1st December: World HIV day

We are influenced by the environment we live in.
I have been listening to this statement many times in high school and even more in University. I have never understood it more then on this day.

Brescia, Italy – 1st December 2006
“today no gymnastic. What about watching a movie?”
Quite unexpected outcome of my favorite lesson in high school. Prof. Arici is a big men, with a bigger heart. He has played rugby leading the team of the city to win the National Championship. Currently spends his year teaching sport to teen agers in the high school and coach many young rugby players. “What does rugby means for you?” “Rugby is the most friendly sport. At the end of the match you take a beer with your opponent. You might have kicked him during the match, but you do it in a proper way, to stop him not to hurt him. And at the end of the match you greet him”. Prof. Arici used to spend his summer in Zambia, driving tourists in local communities. He even speaks diverse local languages. He loves Africa.
I spent with him many hours out of my boring lessons on theories around maths, chemistry, art and other just listening to his stories and asking him to help me reflecting to the value of life.
“Movie of today, Philadelphia [http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_%28film%29]. Tom Hanks & Denzel Washington.

Addis Ababa, 4-8th December 2011
An upcoming conference on AIDS and sexually transmitted infections in Africa has sparked controversy after religious leaders and government officials in Ethiopia held a meeting on Tuesday 29 November, 2011, over whether or not to ban gay rights activists gathering on the fringes of the international meeting. The meeting came after religious leaders canceled a news conference called to denounce the planned conference of gay rights activists.
The 16th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa will be held in the capital Addis Ababa this coming Sunday, where more than 200 activists, experts and UN officials are expected to participate. [read more directly from Ethiopian voice http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/12/01/ethiopia-homosexuality-debate-arises-as-ethiopia-hosts-aids-conference/]

Addis Ababa, July 2011
University. Finally a sunny day. Having a conversation with one of my closest friend it happened to ask him news about his family. His father has passed by more then 10 years ago. He got AIDS.
In my European mind the topic ends here, with sadness for his loss. In that mind, HIV is something far, not really dangerous, or at least easily escapable with proper condoms usage or proper partner screening. In my mind of an European living in Africa I got to know there’s something more behind such a familiar event. There’s the chance to get to know that your father’s death is just the official announcement of your sickness condemn. Launch a coin. For what is known, there’s the same percentage of possibilities that if your parents are sick you are affected by HIV. He is not. Luckily.

Addis Ababa, Everyday.
125 children are attending classes in primary school. They have two new international teacher. They come from Czech Republic and Kenya. They are young,and they even brought some pens and some clothes to the school to make children happier. Is it one of the many private schools for rich families? No, not now. Not anymore.
The school was a private fancy school opened by a young woman willing to offer qualitative education to Ethiopian children. It worked well, until the moment when she decided to accept in the school children from the street. Sons of HIV positive prostitutes, precisely. Rich families changed their sons’ school. She went on with her mission. Currently she lives in a small classroom, in order to be able to manage the schools despite of everything. All her story I want her to tell it through this pages.
Luckily just 4 of the children are HIV positive.
I have 4 nephews. 4 HIV positive children would mean 100% of them.

Sometime, when tragedies happen and affects thousends, millions of people we tend to forget proportion and the value of individuals.

 

Challenge. People are awesome.

March 2009:
“What has been the biggest challenge of your life and how have you overcome it?”
In front of me the interview board of the world biggest student run organization. Inside me a strong will to be part of something big. The feeling of willing to change the world that persecute me since I started going to school that can finally find his place to explode. My ambition to become someone valuable for my society is there. Sitting in front of 4 students and Professors.

The biggest challenge of my life? I am not really sure, probably it has been to study for the final exam of high school, striving to get the maximum while playing volley as professional. Studying on the bus on the way to the next match, on the car of the manager going to the gym to train, in the night, in the class, last minute before the examinations. I made it. 100 e Lode.
Was it a challenge? At the end I did not do anything else then what I was supposed to do. Took my books, took ownership of my duties: Be a student. No, this cannot be.

It can be the trial to enter in the School of Excellence “Sant’Anna di Pisa”. 5 places in total for all the applicants from Economics, Law, Social Science.
Minimum points to get out of 2 days tests: 35. I got 34.5. Failed. mmh. Was that  a challenge? Probably a challenging situation, something for which I tried to prepare for one month, or maybe something I could have managed to achieve if I would have not spent my holidays having some free time. NO, this is not a BIG challenge.

Even though my challenges in life did not really sound like BIG, I managed to join the organization and I lived quite an experience until now.
My biggest learning point has been never to underestimate the talent and the stories that can be behind the person standing in front of you. No matter physical aspect, age, nationality. People are awesome and in the main cases is when you are not expecting to find something special that you actually find yourself amazed by beautiful individuals and by their stories.

Sunday 28th September 2011, Addis Ababa.
I am done with exams, now I just need to create the last 40 pages of a paper  that will be my last step towards closing my University career. Power off. Weather super cold and it’s raining too. We go for lunch to the next available place out of the compound. A small traditional restaurant. As usual, “shiro and firfir. A- m-sakanallow” [or something that sounds like this, meaning: thanks]
The waiter is a young and very cute Ethiopian girl. We got to know she is studying political science in Addis Ababa University. We leave her our business card. AIESEC in Ethiopia starts promotion to recruit. Never know she is a talent.

13th November 2011, Addis Ababa. 8.30 am.
AIESEC Ethiopia recruits and is organizing Induction days for all the new members.
As National President of the organization I am taking part in some interviews during the selection process of the candidates. Rules are clear: if you come late, even if just of 5 minutes, you are out for now. See you in february to the next round.
So, “Tell me something about you, and why should you be the right person for this organization?” In front of me that girl of the restaurant. Still cute. Still looking very interested and motivated to be an AIESECer. But appearance is not really much.
“I come from Eritrea, where I was a marketing student. Now I study Political Science in Addis Ababa University..” “so, if u need to choose one moment, what has been your biggest challenge in life? How have you overcome it?”
“I am a refugee in Ethiopia, I escaped my country where there’s a dictatorship. I would have preferred to die than to stay under intellectual prison. I just did it. I spent 7 month in a refugee camp from UN. Life there is hard. Is not possible to describe it. Someone neither can afford clothes. Many times you don’t have a soap to wash yourself, you are provided with a small cup to drink and some pieces of sugar. The rest is up to you. Generally, there’s anything else. Now I have scholarship here to study and I need to do some job to sustain myself..”
Everything else that was part of the interview is not supposed to be shared. At least, not now.

I felt small. I felt I did nothing in my life. I felt the power of a question, and the universe behind its answer. I felt I want to tell her story to the world. I felt my experience is senseless. I could have I ever thought to have faced challenges in my life?

What is defining the value of our choices? The outcome of them, or the courage that is making us doing one step further?

I called this blog “go out of the box”. I am considering the fact that  many people in the word neither have ever had the chance to be inside the box.