Italy
participants
The goal was to spend an afternoon with international students playing outdoors together and eating typical Parmesan food.
The event is called "SagrASSI" from the union of the Italian word "sagra", which is a local festival, very often involving food and sporting events, and "ASSI", which was the original name of our ESN Section. The acronym is still present in our name (ESN ASSI Parma). In fact, we organized an event that resembled a "sagra" for international students, where people could play, dance, and, finally, eat typical Parmesan food. We started organizing the event in February 2023 by dividing our volunteers into smaller working groups for different tasks, precisely: communication, logistics, fundraising and environmental sustainability, games, registrations. We worked together and coordinated the activities within the organizing committee. Once we found the place where we could organize our event, we invited other ESN Sections to join us, and ESN Modena, ESN Milano Statale, ESN Bergamo and ESN Brescia brought their international students. We sent the Survival Guide to the coming ESN Sections a week before and we collected the registrations. On the day of the event, we offered a city tour to show the international students around Parma and then once they arrived at the location, we distributed the welcome kits. Then, the Erasmus students could play various games where they collected points and they could see where they were placed by checking a ranking list that we were updating online. There was also a game where by paying a fee they could win different prizes. Also by paying another fee, they could get a picture as a memory of the event. The money that we collected was then donated to another association in Parma working for children in hospitals by providing them support with their education while being sick and missing school. In the meantime, there was a DJ playing music. Then we gave the prizes to the best (and worst) players and we eat dinner together, which was an all-you-can-eat of torta fritta (fried bread typical of Emilia region), cold cuts, pizza and erbazzone (a kind of quiche). For people staying in Parma for the night, we organized a party in a disco in the city.
