The whole province in 24 hours

More than 160 speakers, with 1300 guests, in 24 hours of encounters, in 10 different and interesting locations. The day after the last meeting of the series “Diamoci un future” (Let’s give ourselves a future), it is time to take stock of an initiative that took VareseNews around Varese Province for more than two months, on a new experiment which has given interesting results.

The idea was to share the most interesting and meaningful encounters on our 141Tour with a large number of people, presenting them from a particular perspective: looking with hope to the future. We wanted to show and share the fantastic sensation we had during the six-month Tour, on every day of which we met associations, companies, local authorities and individuals, all with a positive desire to change things and to plan the future, without complaining about the crisis.

As we said at each of our ten evenings, we unfortunately had to make a selection of speeches; even with each speech lasting four minutes, we couldn’t call more than fifteen people per meeting. Nevertheless, we presented an interesting cross-section of the positive organisations in our province.

Going back to the numbers (which we have summarised in the two graphs on this page), we met 44 administrators and as many representatives of associations and people working in the fields of culture and tourism; 53 businesspeople and traders, 12 people working in the social sector, 9 in schools and 5 in communication. The age of the speakers varied greatly, but the majority were from the most active part of the population –between 30 and 50 years; if there is a criticism to make of ourselves, it is that we didn’t involve the very young.

Like the 141Tour, "Diamoci un future” was also

an interesting experience, during which we met and listened to our readers and the healthier part of our province. Although it is not free of problems and crisis, the province has a strong social, economic and cultural structure, that can respond to today’s uncertainty with a strong tendency to change. And all this, together with the memory of the lovely people we met, bodes well for the future.