4 min.
Here is the text of the address given by the Scientific Director of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, Alfonso Molina, at the Awards Ceremony for the first edition of the Telemouse 3.0 - Knowledge Volunteers Competition.
Dear Boys and Girls, and all the people and organisations that have made this Telemouse Award dedicated to the Knowledge Volunteers possible,
I would like, first of all, to thank you: the students who have donated their time and good will to interact and provide so many elders with essential ICT knowledge for today's world. But giving also entails receiving and this is what I would like to focus on. You are young and have your entire life ahead of you, to build, in the adventure that is your life.
Today’s world is very complex and holds great challenges ranging from the job market to climactic changes. We are people with an enormous multi-dimensional potential, but constant economic and social pressure tends to reduce our humanity to mere consumers of goods and media messages. The development of this multi-dimensionality is essential for a richer and fuller life. What you are doing now, during your youth, will determine the extent to which this multi-dimensional nature will develop throughout the rest of your life’s journey.
This is why the experience of volunteering and giving to others is so important. It allows you to test you human qualities – from knowledge to generosity and many others as we will see through the opinions and expressions of the elders and teachers who have deeply appreciated what you have done as knowledge volunteers for Project Telemouse.
The Fondazione Mondo Digitale is happy to participate in this knowledge volunteer project held during the European Year for Volunteering and I would like to announce that at the beginning of the next school year, in September 2011, we will invite you to participate in the creation of a Network of Knowledge Volunteers, a network that will grow throughout Italy, stimulating and nurturing the youthful multi-dimensional nature with the force of cooperation and joint learning.
Today, we celebrate Telemouse and the many Knowledge Volunteers who with patience and passion have dedicated their time and energies to this project.
You young knowledge volunteers have efficiently met our expectations and notwithstanding your great number, the Fondazione Mondo Digitale – particularly though Cecilai Stajano and Anna Lain – have dedicated a lot of time to getting to know all of you and, as I have already mentioned, found an incredible human richness that has made it very hard to decide to whom to assign the awards.
After the first vote, we were left with 312 nominations from the elders, teachers and tutors for 174 candidates. And at this point we all understood that you were all winners, because this is what the nominations said. You clearly were all excellent, ready and patient.
• Good because you were understanding, careful, disciplined, gentle, generous, nice, available and educated.
• Ready because you have the necessary technical skills, wanted to transmit your knowledge and were clear, able and precise.
• Patient because you were balanced, careful and concentrated on your task.
So, you may rightly ask, how we decided who to assign the awards to as best tutor and best volunteer. We had to look at four additional criteria to reach our final decision:
• Constance and continuity throughout the project- who was always present? Who did for the longest? Who has continued volunteering? Who wants to do it again?
• Motivation and passion – enthusiasm, interest, reliability, responsibility, maturity and coherence used to develop emphatic relations, not just with the elders but also with your peers.
• Enterprise – the ability to take an initiative and be proactive, creative, communicative, resolute and solve problems. Last but not least,
• Innovative – who took the biggest risk, accepted challenges, who has a vision that projects into the future and wants to change the world?
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