EU Award for LIFE Project – Choose Nature (Choona)
Danilo Selvaggi, LIPU Director General, 3rd June
As perhaps you already know yesterday we received a Special Award 2021 from the European Commission for our project, Life Choose Nature (the so-called Choona).
It is a prestigious recognition of which we are proud, starting with the main participants, the volunteers of Choona.
A recognition to which were added, a few minutes ago, the “personal greetings” of Veronica Manfredi, the Director-General for Environment of the European Commission with “warm congratulations to all the young people of the project”
The European Commission, with Life4Youth wanted to reward the large-scale mobilisation of 310 young volunteers that LIPU organised into 9 teams scattered throughout Italy. They worked on bird conservation projects with e.g. Bonelli’s Eagles, Lesser Kestrels, interventions in cases of pollution and environmental communication.
It was an intense project (tens of thousands of hours of work in more than 3 years), innovative, engrossing and very worthwhile, as much for the specific objectives as for the enhancement of LIPU, which thanks to the project has found new activists and delegates.
We should also recognise that it was part of a wide-ranging project for young European volunteers (ESC -European Solidarity Corps) to involve young people between 18 and 30 in the promotion of “European Awareness” in the environmental, social, artistic and cultural fields.
All supporters, supervisors, and participants are thanked including the Cariplo Foundation who provided additional funds. Danilo sent an enormous thank you to the volunteers themselves.
“We continue to choose nature. We continue to be LIPU, always more and always better”
