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My name is Nicoletta, I’m 32 years old, Italian, and I work as a freelance translator. Like thousands of people from all over the world, I came to Porto Alegre to partecipate in the World Social Forum. Not as a delegate though, but as a volunteer translator. I just wanted to be useful and to give my contribution, however small, to the event. On January the30th, at midday, I arrived in Porto Alegre after an 18-hour bus trip from Sao Paulo. I had spent 10 days in Sao Paulo and surroundings, visiting friends. They had told me that it would be hot in Porto Alegre, and in fact it was: so hot and dry as it is here in Italy in summer. I immediately felt like being at home there. From the bus station I easily reached the Intercontinental Youth Camp, where I was going to stay. The Camp had just opened, and was not yet crowded. After a short queue I got registered. Then I started waiting for 2 friends who were coming directly from Italy, and who were carrying our tent. In the meantime, lots of young people from all over the world were arriving, and it was great to see so many people join together, to see the Camp growing... After some time I went downtown to have a look at the city, and then to the PUC, where a meeting of all volunteers was planned. There we were divided into small groups, and I met the people who were going to work with me for the following week.
After the meeting I got back to the Camp. It was night already, and in those few hours the Camp had grown to be full, there were tents everywhere. My friends from Italy were arrived in the meantime. They had missed their plane, hence the delay. I thought it would be difficult to find them among so many people, but thanks to the very nice and efficient guys at the registering office, I found them very easily. It was great that they remembered me and my friends though they were so busy with the crowds coming in. On the following day, the Forum began. I went to the opening ceremony with other volunteers, most of them from Porto Alegre. We took part in the demonstration through the streets of the city and then watched the ceremony at the Sunset Amphitheatre. It was a beautiful and moving ceremony, and the sunset on the shores of the lake was very beautiful, too. It had been raining in the morning, so now the air was fresh and clear, and we enjoyed watching the colours of the sunset. The following days were spent mostly at work. We, the volunteers, were working for the organization, with translation and other tasks. The delegates were attending as many conferences and workshops as they could. Everybody was trying to make the most of these 4 days of meetings.
Personally I was working in the small team dedicated to translation and information in Italian. There were, besides me, two more Italians, and the rest of us were Brazilians from Porto Alegre, most of them of italian origin. It was great to work with them and we became very good friends in the days that we spent together. When I was free from work, I attended workshops and meetings about the issues I was most interested in, and there I also had the chance to meet people from a great number of Countries, and to build networks with them.
On the last day, after attending the closing ceremony at the PUC, I said goodbye to my italian friends who were going back to Italy immediately, and then for a while, watching all the people going away, I felt a bit sad that this wonderful experience was almost over, and I started wondering whether most of us would be able to carry the Spirit of Porto Alegre with us in our everyday lives. But this feeling didn’t last long. I met my teammates and we went to eat churrasco all together. Everybody was a bit sad that these beautiful days were finished, but we also knew that this was in fact just the beginning, and this cheered us up. Then in the evening, there was a final meeting of all volunteers, and there we also talked about possibilities of working together in the future. When I left Porto Alegre, heading for the State of Paranà were I was going to visit other friends, I was fully aware of the importance that the Forum had had for me as well as for the thousands of people who attended it, to increase our motivation, awareness and self confidence, so that we could believe, even more strongly than before, that REALLY another world is possible.
If you have been to Porto Alegre, please share your experience with other people!