The 150 years of the unity of Italy

The Italian Volunteering Movement (Mo.V.I.), together with the contribution of an increasing number of volunteer organisations, has just started a series of activities aiming to recall and celebrate 2011, the European Year of Volunteering and 150th anniversary of Italian unification.

From individuals to history

In the first stage of the project we will try to bring back to our collective memory life trajectories of women and men who shaped Italian history and led the way to characterize modern solidarity. The basic assumption is that the model of social liability and awareness we experience and carry on nowadays is radically different from the model expressed by the nineteenth century. All the actions that are generically described as "volunteering" are not metahistorical objects, but rather lie in a dialectical position with regard to the social picture they relate to. If  we really want to give weight and worth to volunteer organizations, their role, their features and their action, first we need to outline the historical development of the volunteering/beneficence/solidarity complex.
The method we adopted is to tell our (hi)story about the 150 years of the unity of Italy by means of biographical essays, in order to:
- restore the memory of the people who made civic Italy;
- emphasize the idea that nations are highly articulated structures, which are made not only by economy, institutions, , military and diplomatic issues, but also actions promoted by civil society, social inclusion and rights extension
- connect two important pieces of celebration, namely the European Year of Volunteering and 150th anniversary of Italian unification.