Advertisement
Published: January 16th 2018
Edit Blog Post
Volunteering for Angeli Del Bello
The work we completed yesterday with Angeli Del Bello was something that fully contributed to yesterday being one of my favorite days here so far. The volunteers that worked with us were incredibly kind and obviously very passionate in their work. I often worry that Italians get frustrated by us foreign tourists, but that was absolutely not the case with the volunteers that directed us. They thanked us for our help many times; however, I feel as if the gratitude was shared on both sides.
As Americans, I feel like we do not appreciate the beauty of our own “green” areas of home. Sure, I’ve volunteered on highway and river cleanups before, but those never took such a pure approach. While we wanted to simply clean up garbage thrown in by people, Angeli Del Bello are dedicated to giving back to the city rather than just cleaning up a human mess. Some of us went so far as to clean weeds off of a curb--something that Americans would probably leave to a park maintenance worker.
They never once critiqued our painting techniques (even though I’m certain we could have used
Wristbands given to us for servingit). They also treated these projects as their own personal duty. Although the Angeli Del Bello do not create the graffiti they paint over, they treat the act of concealing it as something that they owe the city. After all, we all have taken from the city by walking her streets, breathing her air and admiring her beauty. We owe the city and her people for the amazing time we have had here.
As non citizens of this city, at first glance it seems strange that we would be volunteering to protect her beauty. In actuality, though, we owe this city so much. Furthermore, as global citizens, we have a duty to love and cherish the entire planet. Refusing to do community service everywhere other than where you live is actually an ignorant way to spend your resources. We should want to give back wherever we are/can because it enriches both ourselves and the area in which we volunteer.
Primarily, I believe this service opportunity was included because it has such a universally positive effect on both us and the city of Florence. Beyond that, though, the community service project is a
The wall we painted (before)learning experience. This trip is a college course, after all, and spending our free time enacting positive change in a small corner of the world teaches us to always allocate the time to serve. After all, it can only be a good thing.
Dr. Sarti’s lecture was absolutely interesting and a bit more of a pessimistic approach than I expected. I have always thought of Italian family life as something that the country had perfected. Movies, after all, depict Italian families as the perfect system of loyalty and support. A few of his experiences with current Italian parenting actually made me draw up parallels between the process of parenting in our country. For example, his Nutella metaphor struck me as something I had noticed before. I have encountered parents in America, for example, that refuse to allow their children to watch television because of the negative effects that television can have on them. Although it may make more sense to instead limit what their child watches as well as the time they spend watching it, the parents instead label the entire concept of the television as a hard no.
Additionally, I have
The wall we painted (after)noticed what Dr. Sari called the “dissection” of parenting in America. There is such an issue with “mom shaming” in our country, where parents are blasted by other parents for such utterly insignificant decisions in parenting. I’ve seen parents get grief over posting photos of their child to social media or even for letting their child play in the snow because “they could get sick!” (and no, I’m not kidding). Besides that, we also have an issue with parents doing everything for their children. Parents have so much pressure placed on them that an overprotective nature emerges more often than not now. Because of this, there are adults in their twenties unable to make a decision for themselves because all of their autonomy is in the hands of their parents.
While the United States has been battling teenage pregnancy for years now, Dr. Sari brought our attention to the growing age of parents in Italy. The average age that a couple has a child is 35/40 years old. While this is certainly a fairly common age in our culture, it is not even close to being a problem like it is in Italy. Having children at an older age means having less children altogether, which is rough for Italy because of their quickly declining population. I’ve heard it referred to here as a sort of “dying out” of the Italian race and culture. Dr. Sari also joked that this age of parenthood means that parents are almost grandparents rather than parents.
On Monday, January 15th I walked 16,754 steps. On Tuesday, January 16th I walked 12,249 steps.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.145s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0992s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb