As you can read from the title today we will talk about one of the various hosting organisations that welcome the European volunteers of the ESC program that chose to come to Italy.
In this article we will present to you the Committe of the Italian Red Cross of Marotta Mondolfo, on the coast of the Marche region.
To start, it is a must to tell you more about the city, well two, typical example of the fusion between the land and the sea. I will explain better, Marotta is the part of the city that is situated along the coast, while Mondolfo is the internal part, in the countryside.
Marotta is famous for its promenade, where you can find a big cycling lane, for being a big beach center that during summer gets alive, for its beaches and for the clarity of the sea water that gained the city the blue flag of FEE.
Moreover it became famous for inspiring the song “Il mare d’inverno” by the Italian singer Enrico Ruggeri.
So during summer, but also during winter, it’s the perfect place to enjoy the typical atmosphere of a coastal city.
Mondolfo is the part of the city up on a hill. The medieval village has been inserted in the list “the most beautiful villages of Italy”. Its double walls all around the town are very famous and inside there is the medieval castle still in perfect conditions and good for sightseeing. The view from above there is amazing: you can see from the hills all around to the beach below.
Nonetheless the town was given the Spiga Verde prize for being attentive to the environment and for its policies of protection and sustainability. We can say that it is a real “green” paradise.
Now let’s talk about the association per se. The committee of the Red Cross of Marotta was born in 1987 thanks to its founder Marcello Seri. The next year, 1988, the delegation of Marotta-Mondolfo was created. The actual headquarter was built in 1995 thanks to donations and it is more in the countryside part of the city.
Being a small reality, the Red Cross there is socially involved in some activities:
- transport of patients going to the hospital for medical appointments;
- transport of patients for dialysis, as to say accompanying people to the hospital for the therapy and then going back to take them again to their houses or to various facilities;
- transport to school for the disabled children, even with autism syndrome.
The figure of the European volunteer is necessary in those situations because it is seen as comfort, sustain for the more fragile people that most of the time have to go through therapies alone, and so even only a smile, a hand shake, a joke makes it all lighter for those people.
The Marotta Committee provides a training course of life saving maneuvers in order to become a Red Cross volunteer by all means. And this happens also for the ESC volunteers. The volunteers will follow a training course with theoretical and practical lessons, with mannequins for the RCP massage, obstruction of the airways and being unconscious.
In conclusion, I want to leave you all with the words of an actual ESC volunteer, Maria from Slovakia:
“Personally I like it here a lot. Our house is only five minutes from work, walking, and the same distance is for arriving at the train station so we don’t need bicycles or other means of transport. Each of us volunteers has a single room and our colleagues are all very kind, they help us a lot, even if not every one of them speaks English, and also we hang out with them a lot, going to dinner…
We have a lot of free time to go around Marche and visit Italy, or we hang out with the other ESC volunteers from the other projects from Vicolocorto. Especially during summer we go to the beach of the Red Cross that is free for us volunteers”.
Giulia
Vicolocortini 