From the 28th to the 30th of September 2018 is back again this year, the Legambiente campaign for environmental voluntary work, which is now to its 26th edition. The association represents one of the pillars of scientific environmentalism, and it involves numerous collaborations, like the patronage of the Ministry of the Environment and for the Protection of the Land and Sea, the Ministry of Education, University and Research, the Italian Representation in the European Commission, UPI (Union of Italian Provinces), Federparchi and UNEP (the United Nations Environment Programme).

 

Every year all the associations, organizations and companies participating in the project, agree, always according to their mission, to enhance the value of the places of everyday life, by cleaning the unwanted trash and taking care of the territory.

 

Citizens, workers, young people as well as international students, get together to spend a few helpful hours to make a great gesture: cleaning the environment from the trash but also from the social and cultural barriers.
This year’s campaign slogan is, indeed, “Let’s clean up the world from prejudices”, addressing concretely themes that are extremely contemporary nowadays. Each concrete action, whether cleaning the park or the beach, will help not only to save our planet but also to interact with the other, with no distinctions of culture, origins or religion, because we all share the same principles and ideas.

 

Among the participants to the project in 2017 one can find important names like COSPE (Cooperation for Development of Emerging Countries), which contributes to the overcoming of the poverty and social injustice in the world; the Italian Red Cross, ADA (Association for the Rights of the Elderly); Fair Trade Foundation; Movement for the Citizen’s Defense; CNGEI (National Group of Italian Young Explorers); Slow Food, whose commitment is to give food the right value, always in harmony with the producer and the environment, and many more.

 

It is great to see how realities which appear to be distant and different, can get together in a park, a garden or a city, to collaborate for a common ideal, with a small gesture that, if made by all of us every single day could really change the world we live in.

 

Again this year Erasmus Student Network Italy has found its spot in this project, with its 53 sections scattered all over the Country, it will invite more than 20.000 Erasmus or Exchange students to take care of their host cities. The collaboration between Legambiente and Puliamo il Mondo has been going on for many years, and it is now consolidated. The initiative fits perfectly inside the SocialErasmus project, whose aim is to encourage the integration of the international students in the community that hosts them, thus leaving a mark through different voluntary activities. On this point, we would like to remember the constant commitment of all the sections of ESN Italy with the last two editions of the Earth Day promoted by the Agenzia Nazionale Erasmus+/INDIRE and “Clean beaches and seabeds”, in collaboration with Legambiente.

 

ESN Italian sections get in on the game first-hand, inviting the students to take care of the town and place that hosts them, in a pleasant climate of joy and sharing, to learn together how to take care of what surrounds us.

 

And now the only thing to do is to roll up our sleeves and organise events all over the national territory, to make our voice heard, taking care of the environment we live in.

 

Students, volunteers, Erasmus...are you ready to leave your mark?