(Applause)
I was born on September 1, 1971.
Here.
I show it to unleash a bit of envy.
It’s no accident that I was born there,
because I belong to a family
that made traveling its own trademark.
My grandfather from ’37 to ’47 was in East Africa.
At the same time, his twin brother was in Argentina.
My father went, after the war,
in Argentina, where he met my mother,
that was born near here.
I am 45 years old and I am very curious.
I know a lot of things to have heard them, listen to them, read them.
But one thing I know from me:
traveling out changes you inside.
My first flight I did that I was 9 months old.
I have no memory of that flight,
but something must have happened
if then, later, I would have done 250 flights
of which at least 34 intercontinental.
I spent the first 12 years of my life between the two continents.
Between America and Europe, between Italy and Argentina.
Every four years, on average, we changed country and continent.
In all this traveling, in this wandering
my travel companion was my twin sister,
with whom I shared school and free time.
When I wanted others to not understand what I meant
I spoke to her in our secret code
that was: Italian when we were in Argentina;
Spanish, when we were in Italy.
Here, this is something I have: they are bilingual.
I am at the level of being able to hold a conversation with my son,
speaking in Spanish, and he answering me in Italian.
Those of you speak foreign languages
he knows that this thing is not at all simple.
I discovered it with my mother.
My mother is a native Spanish speaker,
he learned Italian when he was already an adult.
I asked her, of course, to speak with my children in Spanish.
But she can not do it.
When my son answers her in Italian, she sticks to speak Italian.
And [as] you can imagine,
I got nervous about this situation more than once.
She tells me: ‘It’s that I’m confused’.
Well, it is confusion, the real and important question.
There is an interesting research by Anglia Ruskin University,
where they made a comparison between bilingual children and monolingual children.
And they discovered that bilingual children are much more capable than monolinguals
to keep the attention focused.
They wondered why, and the answer is this:
in fact,
whenever a bilingual child has to face reality
always has at least two labels, two words,
that can be used.
And every time he has to keep one and suppress another one.
Keep one and suppress another one.
This operation trains, in the long run,
the ability to stay focused,
compared to what is the work that must be done.
Is this just the advantage? No, there are also others.
For example, the University of Ghent
he found out that in bilingual people
the symptoms of Alzheimer’s appear five years later,
on average, compared to monolinguals.
And other research says that bilinguals
they have a greater creative capacity than the monolinguals.
This because?
Because, basically, languages help us to describe reality.
And they do it with nuances that are different.
These nuances never coincide.
They are nuances that allow us
to describe reality in another way.
So when I have two,
these nuances create a situation
that forces me to have
a greater depth in the knowledge of reality.
It’s a bit like seeing.
If I look with one eye, an image is flat.
If I, instead, look with both eyes, I have the depth.
This because?
Because I have two images
that are not the same, they have discrepancies.
But our brain then recomposes them,
and it gives us depth.
The same thing happens with cultures.
It happens that, somehow,
the need to compose rules, behaviors, different ways of life
it forces us to have a greater depth of understanding.
I’ll give you a small example.
In 1983 I had just come back from Argentina,
where I had bought a sweatshirt suit.
It was a suit that I really liked.
They were the first to go around, I was very proud of it.
And I remember having decided
to go to school dressed in this suit.
I went to school, I entered, I sat down
and Matteo, my companion, looks at me and tells me:
“Belletti, what are you doing? Today there is no gymnastics!”
Then I understood immediately, because I looked around
and I saw that, indeed, I was the only one who had on the suit.
I understood that in Italy the dress is a monk.
And that there is a dress code for anything.
That everyone knows, but it is not written.
While in Argentina one can go dressed as he wants.
So, I had to question what was happening.
And in finding an answer,
I acquired a greater depth of knowledge,
respect, for example, how you dress.
And how dressing is not something given for granted,
but it depends on cultures.
Is there only this? No, there are other things too.
For example, the World Economic Forum
has compiled a ranking of the 10 most relevant skills for 2020.
Now, at least five of these
they can be safely trained and developed
the moment I live in a different country.
I focus only on the first, Complex problem solving.
Which is fundamental:
it is the ability to solve problems and complex situations.
Imagine that continuous and daily training has a foreign person
that is having to understand
if the things he’s doing
they are correct or not for the culture in which it is found.
It’s a continuous training,
from the moment I get up in the morning to the moment I go to sleep.
In short, what I want to say is:
go to live abroad!
Travel, take this experience.
By the way, if you are under 29, and someone here in the hall is definitely like that,
you have an incredible opportunity.
Today there are a thousand ways to do it at low cost.
I give you only two words, then go look for them:
Erasmus Plus and European Voluntary Service.
They are two wonderful opportunities
in order to travel, to live in other countries,
and develop all these skills practically paying nothing.
And if you do not want to go anywhere,
because you say: “I have a mortgage, I have many things, I can not do it”.
Very well, this is not a problem, because we have the world behind the house.
In a city like Turin,
just go a little ‘in the suburbs and there we find the world.
We find a lot of people
that is in the condition that I described before with the suit.
People who continually ask questions about how we live.
And looking for answers.
If we were able to grasp those questions, those questions,
it would allow us to have a deeper understanding of our reality.
And maybe change it, too.
After all, innovation is this stuff here, is not it?
Innovation is the possibility of putting together the different ones.
But it takes a new narrative, a narrative that is more favorable.
Think of this man, Carlos Pellegrini, Italian-Argentine.
he became President of the Argentine Republic at the end of the 19th century.
This happens exactly twenty years
from the first massive Italian immigration to that country.
It’s like today,
twenty years after the first massive Albanian immigration in Italy,
we had an Italian-Albanian Council President.
Possible?
Thank you.
(Applause)
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