XL, l'house organ di OPES anno 1, n°7, numero doppio agosto | settembre 2019 | Page 46

ENGLISH VERSION
CIVIL SERVICE
Brussels: “Unity in diversity”
L et’s open a window on the experience of Italian Civil Service in the “city of diversity”.
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BRUSSELS: “The world from an airplane porthole looks
like a well-organized place” says a song by Daniele
Silvestri, and, from the plane Rome Fiumicino-Brussels
Zavantem, Belgium looks like a flat country with lots of
greenery and neat terraced houses, a place that has been
and is the destination of so many enthusiastic people
like us for decades. How many young people from all
over Europe, and beyond, have travelled this route with
dreams and hopes, looking for a launching ramp for their
expectations in this land? Statistics would be missing, but
certainly hundreds of thousands. Well, we’re here too
now! Once the training period in Rome, necessary for the
launch of our National Civil Service with OPES, is
over, we join the ranks of trainees, scholarship holders,
students and workers who animate this dynamic and
colourful European capital. We arrive at Avenue Michel-
Ange 49, an elegant liberty-style street, parallel to the
European Commission in the middle of the European
Schumann district, here we find the office of YEU (Youth
Exchange and Understanding), the international hosting
organization in which from 5 March 2019 we are doing our
Civil Service period. Tamara Gojkovic, general secretary
of YEU and our OLP (local project operator) welcomes us,
apart from the cold biting wind. We come immediately
introduced into the world of YEU and its projects,
concerning the organization of events and initiatives in
the non-formal education sector and of the mutual cultural
exchange between young Europeans and non-Europeans.
YEU is, in fact, a network that involves very different cultural
and geographic associations and realities. But we’ll talk
about it later. Here, apart from YEU, more international
organizations coexist, such as Out of the box and CEV,
which are equally involved in the field of international
cooperation, cultural exchanges and the promotion of
volunteering. From the first moment, the environment
we breathed in the office seemed to us to be clearly an
extension of what we find on the streets and places of
Brussels. In fact, the city presents itself as a cheerful and
colourful melting pot of peoples, cultures, religions and
several ways of understanding everyday life, a patchwork
of different languages, of frenetic comings and goings and
people in suits that go back and forth between the various
offices of the European institutions. “Unity in diversity”
states the motto of the European Union and we do not find
perhaps a complete manifestation better of this concept of
coexistence that has been created here in Brussels. In fact,
in this period of crisis, Europe needs unity and diversity.
This is not only the official motto of the European Union
but also and above all the nucleus of a viable future
from Europe itself and of the Union’s contribution to a
peaceful world that encourages multiculturalism and
supports and multiplies, therefore, opportunities for
cultural interchange. The cultural interchange that in our
experience of Civil Service is almost on the agenda. The
first days in the European capital have been a progressive
increase of enthusiasm and knowledge, the swirl of events
and opportunities that the city can offer is almost endless.
The great multiculturalism sometimes gives the feeling of
being in an airport more than in a city, and discovering
seriously the Belgian culture, out of stereotypes, it is
difficult in Brussels. The Belgians tend to stay away from
the so-called “Eurobubble” inhabited by officials and
employees of European institutions (Etterbek for example)
or from the center, instead generally populated by tourists
from all over, looking for food, souvenirs, and cheap
entertainment. They love to visit the more residential and
human-scale neighborhoods like Ixelles, Châtelain, St.
Gilles, Uccle. Authentic housing jewels and well served
by transport and municipal services. Brussels is an enclave
born halfway between the Flemish region and the French-
speaking region of Wallonia, a metropolitan bubble where
different realities coexist, a place of political and economic
decisions. But without getting sucked in too much by the
so-called “Eurobubble” we return to YEU and our daily
activities. YEU was born in Strasbourg in 1986 on the
initiative of 120 young people from 11 different countries.
The association is, in fact, a network that involves very
different cultural and geographic associations and realities;