5 years ago I sent an email making a mistake that changed my life. I was desperate to leave my home country once I realized my rebel spirit didn’t fit into the lethargic Italy. I wrote to thousands of charities and NGOs in the UK asking for an internship. Everybody knows that my English is a bit awkward. So, I asked my best friend A. – the gay daddy – to write a template. His text was perfect but I managed to screwed up interpreting Sir/Madam as a title to address the recipient of my emails. Sir Bubb was in that list.
We were like two soulmates finally reunited. We recognized reciprocally our talent that the world hadn’t acknowledged so far. This is the beginning of the story that changed the third sector in the UK, Europe and finally, established a new global order. Yes, the end of the story is still about to come!
Few weeks after that email I started my internship at ACEVO. It was tough at the beginning: first intern, first foreigner and without the Oxbridge accent. Berlusconi didn’t help my international brand as well. However, Sir Bubb has backed since then in my crazy – at the time! – endeavor to globalize the third sector. I remember several board members and senior staff members didn’t have a clue about what we were doing internationally. Fortunately, they were persuaded or dismissed one by one.
Sir Bubb has a special talent. He is not exactly an effortless manager and extremely talented at motivating his staff but is able to detect and enroll the best young talents making them voluntarily slave for a modest salary. Naturally everybody is very happy and proud of working with him.
Moreover, he’s a natural born Labour party campaigner. Once the injustice has been tracked and the constituency is mobilizing he’s the bravery – perhaps helped with some glasses of Pol Roger – to guide the crowd toward victory. I remember he challenged the British government when it attempted to take over the money of the Lottery at the expenses of charities. He was in the first page of the Sunday Times.
I can’t forget to mention his ‘soap opera’ with his ‘arch rival’ which has entertained everybody and kept the magazine of the sector alive for the last 5 years. The whole thing is a media creation as they get on well personally, but conflict sells magazines so a media myth was born. This competition has been not only a source of innovation within the sector but has also saved the jobs of several journalists. It’s very third sector – saving jobs in such a crisis.
Sir Bubb is a volcano of ideas and now he’s at the forefront supporting third sector to get through the crisis. In my knowledge no other organization has been so foresighted about the crisis developing a website and services to help the sector. At the same time we work together to develop the first European network of third sector leaders – Euclid Network – which will build European civil society, reform the EU and boost Global Europe. It’s inspiring and fun working with him!
For these and many other reasons it’s time to publicly reward the contributions of Sir Bubb to society and I call on the Queen to confer him a suitable title as with all the other heroes in British History. Dear Queen, please confirm the Sir in Sir Bubb or – if you really want to exagerate – knight him Lord Europe. Don’t you reward your politicians sending them to the continent?
