Europe Day 2020.
Europe Day was celebrated on 9th May. A day that unites more than 740 million people in a big celebration! But what exactly do we recur?
On this same date, in 1950, Robert Schuman made a declaration calling for solidarity between France and Germany. As French foreign minister, he wanted countries to share coal and steel production to present war like something “not only unthinkable, but materially impossible”. His appeal run across Europe and gradually other European countries joined the initiative laying the foundations of lasting peace.
Here’s what we celebrate, a union for peace, a union that for seventy years has kept us all closer. Literally, because thanks to the European Union, the possibilities of traveling, communicating, sharing have become possible and above all easy.
The European Union has built bridges where there were only borders. It gave the possibility of free movement, not only of goods and services, but of people such as students, workers, volunteers. It has opened the doors to new possibilities, to solidarity, to mutual help. To the fight, all together, against climate change. To support, all together, to democratic participation. To solidarity, all together, to integration. Therefore, May 9 is an opportunity to reflect on the results obtained and to celebrate them, all together and united.
And this is how the European motto resounds: United in diversity.
On this day of Europe, where unity is strength, we also and above all celebrate diversity and difference, respect for it and knowing how to recognize ourselves in it. A diversity that makes us unique as individuals and as cultures, a diversity that enriches the whole and that must be valueted. We need all feel the same in our diversity, in our identity because Europe is like a family that reunites from distant places to the same table.
And it is precisely through food that the Portuguese Abrigo Seguro association wanted to celebrate this day, collecting colors, scents and flavors from all over the Europe on a large virtual table.
Argonauta took place to this event too with the italian dish ‘Lasagne al Verde’ cooked by our EVS volunteer Claudia Calamia.
A mix of dishes and recipes shared on the association’s FB page, cooked and shared by many guys around Europe, has allowed not only to learn about new delicacies, but to feel brazenly close to each other. So that a hot Francesinha from Porto, Portugal, could virtually be enjoyed accompanied by lavash, an Armenian bread, to then refresh us with Okroshka soup from eastern Ukraine, taste Italian pizza and pasta and conclude the meal with a Bolo de cenoura, a Portuguese dessert covered with chocolate.
A joy for the eyes and the heart: click here to enjoy the virtual table!
The sharing of spaces and moments, the desire to feel unique, but part of the whole, even from afar has been successful! And, as always happens around a table, it has allowed even those who are not at home to feel at home.
