20.01.2010

It's Time to Trade Up!

Small colorful cards were everywhere to be seen this morning.
In each of the working groups the colors were associated with a different subject discussed yesterday and were randomly handed out to the participants. The delegates then had to trade colorful cards with each other in order to hold in their hands the color representing the one
subject they relate to the most.
And isn't that in fact what it's all about?
We each hold an enormous amount of cards in our hands, in a variety of colors we can't even start to imagine. Some of them we hand-picked ourselves, some of them were given especially to us. Some of them were forced upon us. And others we just randomly ended up
holding. We collected these cards all our lives, in each experience we've been through and with each person we got to meet.
Hundreds of us have gathered here in Bari for the past two days to talk about society gaps, economical crises, environmental burning issues, employment opportunities, and so on and so forward. But let's not miss out on the most important thing. Let's not forget all the cards we have in our hands.
Now is the time to start trading up!
Trading up our cards. Trading up our experiences. Trading up our thoughts. Our difficulties. Our successes.
It's all about give and take. I can assure you, that every time you'll give someone one of your cards - whether it's your individual thought, your personal experience or your organization's projects- you'll get something in return. It might be something you were looking for and hoping to find, and it might be something that had never crossed your mind.
So now, at the peak of our work, as we are all busy with writing proposal papers and action plans, let's not forget to expose all our cards, share as much as we can with each other, and end up holding in our hands the cards that are most important, useful and beneficial, to us, our organizations, our communities, and mainly - our future!