Italy: Bringing a smile to the third sector

?A smile will save the world?. This is more than a theory for Alberto Terzi, a sociologist, teacher and president of Centro Studi Prospettive, a study centre based in Como, Italy, that has turned the art of laughing into a style of teaching as well as into a real social commitment.

It was during a trip to Cape Verde that Terzi first noticed the social potential that lay within laughter. He was travelling with an NGO called Stringhe colorate (coloured laces), and it struck him that comedy is an Esperanto that enables you to communicate with far a way peoples. Today, he rediscovers this same principle every day in his work as a teacher.

Pain is not a way of life
Terzi is convinced that the third sector would benefit from a good old laugh as well. ?The third sector should shake off the pity it often dresses in ? sure, there is plenty of unhappiness and pain out there, but it should be tackled as a project, not as a way of life?, he says. Laughing, after all, is democratic. It helps to create a good working atmosphere and, says Terzi ?stops you from thinking you are out to save the world. It puts things into perspective?.

These, and other notions are all collected into a teaching manual called Lets get serious! A few simple ways to learn how to laugh, that Terzi co-authored with Valentina Broggi, a child physiologist. The manual is meant for teachers and tells them how to include laughter into their lessons. ?Lets get serious! is a teaching aid, not a clown?s disguise for teachers? cautions Terzi, who explains that the basic principle is to laugh to make others laugh, to be ironic together.

So, making people laugh is a technique, but can it also be a job? According to Terzi, it can. ?Social clown?s can make a real difference in the lives of children, ill people, the disabled, the elderly?. Unlike the Patch Adams approach, in fact, Terzi follows the stream of thought that sees laughter as a means of increasing the wellbeing of the individual as a whole, not as a therapy.

This same approach is reflected in the work of a young ?social? clown, who is making her unusual (and funny) choice into a full time non profit career.

Monica Roveda
Monica Roveda is 31 although by the light in her eyes you wouldn?t know it. She calls herself a ?volunteer coordinator? but her job at the Veronica Sacchi Foundation is a bit more complicated than that. In fact, until a short time ago what she does wasn?t even a ?real? job ? she was just helping out.

Veronica Sacchi was an 18 year old girl when she was tragically killed in a car accident. Following her death, her parents decided to set up a Foundation in her name that would be dedicated to youth and youth culture. Since 2001, the Foundation has grown into a busy volunteering centre that has trained more than 250 young people and that now employs Monica, who had volunteered there since 2003, to keep the show on the road. Literally, because the Veronica Sacchi Foundation (FVS) trains young people to be clown therapists and every week 50 or so FVS volunteers visit hospitals, old folks homes and prisons with their multi-coloured wigs and oversize shoes taking cheer to people who are sometimes forgotten and often pitied.

?The hardest thing about what we do is having to accept reality, the knowledge that in the end we are impotent and cannot change the sadness we see around us? says Monica, who has visited children?s cancer wards enough times to know that the children there come and go. On the other hand, she says, the happiness one is filled with by the knowledge that the smiles you bring really make a difference is incommensurable. And often it isn?t just the patients that you end up helping, but their parents, children or even the staff.

The FVS has not limited it?s activities to Milan, where they are based. On several occasions the Foundation has travelled abroad – to Albania and to Nairobi – to bring cheer but also to teach others the art of clown therapy. ?Our visits abroad were especially touching experiences? explains Monica who travelled to both countries as a clown therapist, ?because we saw that misery and joy can coexist, that there is hope even when you think there should be none?. Importantly, the FVS learned that it was important to teach others to teach how to laugh, that it was only then that they would bring with them a lasting change. ?Both trips taught me a great deal, in particular I learned to face my own challenges with a smile? she says. The hardest moment? ?Saying goodbye to the children?.

More info:
www.veronicasacchi.it