Updated on April 18, 2016
(Re)START ! welcome new volunteers
The sunrise of new M.A.R.E. project – 4th edition. Every year there’s something changing: the house, the activities, the van, and of course the volunteers!!
4th GENERATION VOLUNTEERS
This year we will host 4 new, young, European volunteers and of them are already here with us; we are waiting for the last one: Akrem from Tunisia who is late because of VISA requirements. Last year it took 12 days to obtain the document, while this year it is taking more than 1 month: terrorism had it’s results…very scary! No matter what, we will wait for the VISA and this will just increase our energy and excitment to work with him! Here is few info about them:
ELZA is a youg Latvian girl who was the first one that came here! She is a video maker who always walks with camera in her hand and seems to be a night animal. I think she’s not very involved in marine experiences so she will discover a world that is quite far from her life – more than other people – and she will help us to support our project with documentation.
RADEK is a photographer as well, musician and political science student. He appears to be a person interested in many things, and I hope we will concentrate on the MARE topic during our next months together. Radek is 190cm tall and is already able to say somethings in Italian; even if his never ending questions and funny stories are still in english.
NURIA is our marine biologist from Spain and has many experiences in the field of marine conservation. She’s coming to us from a marine mammals watch program in Mexico. When she entered in the new M.A.R.E. house, a group of dolphins came to welcome her just in the Marina della Lobra Bay! It was truly incredible!
FIRST WEEK
Soon we will publish the first impressions and emotions of our new volunteers that currently concentrate 80% of their activities on Italian language, with a full immersion course 20h per week. Following their Italian immersion, they will be discovering the territory and the Park activities which consists of meeting the local culture and genuine food. Below is a brief gallery of the first 2 activities we did:
1. Naturalistic drawing of Ieranto Bay from the peak of San Costanzo mountain
2. Lectures and Snorkeling about MPA Punta Campanella with 40 German students
Our first activities took place with much laughter, smiles and anticipation to begin on the project daily work. The group is very motivated and also works harmoniously together. The different personalities working together with many unique experiences that each one of them collected in their life will enrich and help our daily work.
Welcome guys ;)
Updated on November 20, 2020
The neverending story of the project MARE
We are now at the dawn of the 4th edition of the project MARE. In April we will host another 4 new volunteers, who still can not imagine how this project will upset their lives and the perception of nature and the sea.
But before you start a new round of tournament, it is worth to consider something that is born in the last years of the project: the MARElini community — an unexpected product, the unplanned and very interesting consequence, which must have a name to be more real and tangible: I propose M.A.R.E. NE.ST.
MARElini Community
MARE NeSt stands for: M.A.R.E. Neverending Story — The Neverending Story of the project MARE, just like the magnificent book by Michael Ende (here is the movie in English and the song by Limahl) or a story that will never end! The connections in the MARElini community that were made in these years — even among the several generations of volunteers who meet and exchange experiences and energies, often outside of Italy — are inseparable. We shared many experiences together and continue to do so: this is what unites us!
The love for nature, love for the human beings, the wish to “feel involved” and to face new challenges, to communicate in different languages, to jump into the distant cultures and try different flavors, to meet many countries even without going there but by looking into the eyes — black, brown, green and blue — of the people who are coming here, to the magnificent landscapes of the Sorrento Peninsula, with the wish to restore the sense of “being young” (which is often considered as a weak category in Italy and Europe) and “the sense of returning to nature” (also nature is now often considered as weak, weary, almost defeated by the strength of the human — as we know it is totally not true, and every time we take one of the paths in Ieranto, we experience maximum expression of nature’s force).
marelini 2015
The NEST-CRADLE-HIDEOUT-REFUGE
MARE NEST is also the nest, the cradle, the hideout, the refuge. I think the project is like a springboard — to test yourself. And going back to my internship at the AMP Punta Campanella in 2003, it was a very good experience during which I compared the theory with practice — what was written in the University books with what reality offers you, my environmentalist’s ideals with the actual work that the Organization for Protection of Nature can do. I remember before starting the internship, I had promised myself to visit the Bay of Ieranto — mythological place but not known to me. I could not start my work experience at the park without knowing its soul. It was May 7, 2003 and since then the Bay of Ieranto came into my life and there is no longer any other way! I had a unique opportunity and the best way to honor it is to give the opportunity to other young people to have the same experience.
Where MARElini are now?
The project MARE is a starting point to live and rediscover the once made experience in a new destinations. Here is the map of where the MARElini have migrated. They all spread in different directions in search of new ideas, with the same blue flag in heart and with tentacles instead of hands, sure to make the same migration sooner or later towards that mythical cove opposite the Island of Capri, with rich nature and archaeology, and home place for a permanent laboratory where the human is seeking for nature and the new ways to interact with it.
Updated on November 20, 2020
Spring summer fall winter and spring
Who never watched Kim-ki Duk’s wonderful movie “spring summer fall winter and spring”?! Who didn’t fall in love with the rhythm of the seasons in this incredible Korean valley?! (here is the link for who still hasn’t watched it http://www.filmpertutti.click/primavera-estate-autunno-inverno-e-ancora-primavera/). The parallels between the magical lake in the valley with our wonderful bay are quite obvious! ;)
The seasons of M.A.R.E.
Also our project M.A.R.E., since some years ago, works like the movie. Seasons that move trough new editions of the project, waiting for the approval of new applications form the National Agency, and then starting again the selection of new volunteers, the purchase of travel tickets, the welcoming and training, the beginning of the season with the strongest sun and the water temperature around 28°, the false slowdown of September and October when the sea is still warm and we have to work at the same time for the new application, the new false slowdown in November and December with the environmental education program in the schools of the park, and finally the volunteers’ departure, after the last feed-back activities!
Bureaucracy
The question is: what happens in the headquarters of project MARE and Punta Campanella MPA in January-February-March? The answer is very simple: writing financial and final reports, creating new initiatives, building new collaborations and projects: in short we just close the previous year and start to build the foundation for the next summer season. Project MARE is made also of papers and documents – to satisfy the hunger of bureaucracy of the European Commission, as well as because of the Marine Protected Area’s Public Body character. This is the most difficult job for me, in spite of my wish to wrap up the previous edition and to start the new one afresh in the best possible way.
Training & Contacts
To be honest wintertime is also the period that lets us – dog-days warriors – spend time on training about natural issues, marine biology, sea turtles, and also to work for new didactic material and training programs. In this case there are some books that help us, and some study methods as well (CARLIT cartography of littoral and upper-sublittoral rocky communities, for example), that we can use and apply during the next spring and summer. Also we work for the collaborations: this is the time to meet people and establish new symbiotic relationships to work better. Usually it works with organisations that care about volunteering, environmental protection, sustainability and youth training. This year besides the work with Sorrento Lingue that send us interns from the US to work for clean-up initiatives, and PRO LOCO Massa Lubrense with who we realize a very nice environmental education project “A sea to explore” that this year had even better results than the past edition, a newer and more interesting collaboration is going to be established with INN – International Napoli Network, that works for the incoming and orientation of volunteers from all around the world. Will this be our lifeline? Hope so, because this year National Agency have reduced the number of volunteers that we could host, and we need new arrivals to let us work on all the activities we built up over the years.
Right now I’ll be happy to finish all the papers of the past MARE edition, with the aim of producing an easy-to-read report for you all, clear and complete, to share with you the happiness about all the good results (and maybe find the way of discussing the bad ones). See you soon!
Posted on January 18, 2016
What about Italy, Kaya?
What’s the thing you’ll miss most from here? What’s the thing you miss most from Czec Republic?
The people I’ll miss from Italy./ Poledance I miss from Czech Republic.
You notice a big difference between people from Czech and Italy?
No, not much. I’m living in the South of the Czech Republic, and here we are at the South of Italy. Maybe there’s some connection to that.
Italian food. What do you think about Pasticceria and Rosticceria? The amount of sugar in the food is higher than in your country? What does T-Rex think about this?
Pasticceria is one of the best places in the world. I think from sugar/fat in the food it’s more or less equal to Czech Republic. Rosticceria? Eh sorry what is it again?
T-Rex doesn’t like Pasticceria, because one time he got totally drunk by eating to many „Babbá“. He fell on the floor and couldn’t stand up again. He couldn’t help himself, his arms were too short.
Napoletan/Italian. What sounds better?
When you speak Napoletan it sounds a bit like your gypsy. Or like someone without teeth. In general I prefer Italian than Napoletan.
Show us your favourite Italian gesture.
-I don’t care-
Which Italian stereotype you discovered as true/false?
Drinking a lot of coffee, driving in a superchaotic way. Stereotypes which turned out as wrong…i don’t know, are at least not coming into my mind now.
Describe in few adjectives the charateristics of Italian culture.
Colorful, noisy, funny.
You would have gone to Project M.A.R.E if it wouldn’t have taken place in Italy but in Iceland?
Yes, for sure.
Updated on January 16, 2016
Salam Salam. Imen alias I alias Imenna alias Ilaria alias Arfaoui interviewed
