Dear friends, boys and girls, volunteers from different countries of the European community, it is with real pleasure that I extend my hearty HALLO to you all together with our Voluntary Service Center's and the two hundred member organizations’ workers. The project that brought you to Messina, coming from the experience and cooperation of our expert manager Mariangela Filocamo and our skilled director Rosario Ceraolo, makes us proud because it is an opportunity for us all to meet and welcome you personally together with the communities you represent and that we feel very near our hearts. The project is, we hope, particularly intriguing because makes us aware of the need for Europe to turn from a financial and bureaucratic institution into a real common country where European citizens, young and old,  of different culture, religion and way of life can freely meet and exchange their experiences and projects, realizing what all of us wish for a better quality of life. The so called OLD CONTINENT may be an ideal place for meeting and cooperating also with the new generations coming from other continents. The European legal civilization needs – if we want our common dream of peace and justice among all nations and continents to come true - to assert strongly and bravely the values of democracy and ​​of human rights, not only for the European peoples, or for those hunting for a job and  migrating for better living conditions or to escape from war and famine, but for every human being. Messina is on two seas, the Jonian and Tyrrhenian, and their waters are part of a little ocean that Romans called “Mare nostrum” “our sea”; well, we wish that the Mediterranean may be, one day, the ideal milieu, the meeting and mythical place of cultures and peoples that , firstly, love living in peace. We wish to share this dream with you, in turn, to share with your families and communities you come from:

We are made of dreams, Shakespeare says, but we live to realize them; it’s a challenge for strong and determined voluntary and willing human beings, expecially young like you in body and soul. We say STOP to injustices, racism, barbaric clashes, we say YES to a united world, only ONE world, with only ONE race, the human race, where everybody is free to profess his religion and enjoy its way of life in peace and respect of other cultures and religions and trying to live on a respectable job in a worthy  social and economic status. This message we are launching together from Messina, may reach particularly the politicians’ and rulers’, economic and religious leaders’ hearts. Thank you for what you represent and will realize all together in the next few days to make our European dream come true. Chins and spirits up! Have a good stay! Bye!

President - CESV Messina

Antonino Mantineo