People who attended the tour:

1. Leonardo de Angelis, President
2. Paula Noah de Angelis, spouse
3. Philippe Cohen, Chairperson of “Community Service Committee” (part-time attendance)
4. Karina Cohen, spouse
5. Zsuzsa Barna, Chairperson of “Rotary Centennial Committee”
6. Vartan Toganyan, Chairperson of “Vocational Service Committee”
7. Jurgen Weiss, Member
8. Gudrun Weiss, spouse
9. Leonid Suslov, Member (part-time attendance)
10. Valeria Suslova, spouse (part-time attendance)
11. Lorenzo Mezzadri, Member (part-time attendance)
12. Elena Barisenkova, companion (part-time attendance)
13. Maria Izossimova, Assistant Secretary

Last February, when I started to draft this tour, I had in mind the following main objectives to be reached:

1. Increase the friendship among as many members of our club as possible.
2. Increase our friendship with the RC Bari, Ravenna and Remscheid, our sister-clubs.
3. Start relationship with some other clubs: Casamassima, Faenza, Pisa and Parma.

1. Increase the friendship among as many members as possible.

The thirteen people, seven Rotarians and five spouses or companions and Masha who have attended full or part-time this tour have really got to know each other better and, I think, developed their friendship. After spending more than a week all together we were able to understand each other better. The pleasant time shared but also the difficulties of cohabitation of people having each different uses and characters have proved that this kind of experience was really useful. In future we should organize other trips like this one, or at least one-day trips, I think.

2. Increase our friendship with the RC Bari, Ravenna and Remscheid, our sister-clubs.

• RC Remscheid, Germany (District 1810)

After having given first positive answer to our proposal, no members of this Club attended the tour.

• RC Bari, Italy (District 2120)

This club, founded in 1934, has 137 members.

Gianbattista De Tommasi, PP of the Club and Nicla, his spouse, stayed in Ravenna for two days. Even only by this “short” presence RC Bari demonstrated its will of increasing the friendship with our Club.

I wish to remind our members, in particular those who had not yet been in our Club last years that the two clubs have already proved their will of cooperation. The main results of this cooperation can be resumed as follows:

• The visit of our Club (9 people) to Bari in May 2002 for the sister-ship ceremony. Carlo Natale and Gianbattista De Tommasi were the two Presidents implementing this event.
• The visit of a group of 20 people approximately from RC Bari to Moscow in November 2002 when they attended our Music Competition (Josef Marous, President).
• The Music Tour of five young musicians and two teachers in Italy (Ravenna, Bari, Martina Franca, Ostuni) in May 2003 when RC Bari organized three concerts and hosted all those people during their stay in the Puglia region.

• RC Ravenna, Italy (District 2070)

This club, founded in 1948, has 100 members. RC Ravenna has been cooperating with our Club since 2001. They have granted 4.000 $ to our Club in the last three years: 1000 $/year to “Julya and Nastya” (3-year project) and 1000$ for Children Music Competition in November 2003 (Tiberius Braun, President). They organized one concert and hosted 7 people at the occasion of the Music Tour Italy (see above), May 2003.

Leonardo & Paola, Gianbattista De Tommasi and Nicla have been the honor-guests of a special meeting of the Club held on 17.09.2004, at the occasion of the visit of Alfiero Rampioni, DG of District 2070 which units 93 clubs of Toscana, Emilia Romagna and San Marino.

Maurizio Casadio, PP of this Club, drove some of the “Russians” from Rimini Airport to Ravenna on Saturday 18.09.2004 and Sunday 19.09.2004 around Ravenna and its surrounding area. He also organized our visit to the Museum of Ceramics in Faenza and contacts with the RC of Faenza. He was all the time in contact with us for any kind of assistance we could need. Since 2001 Maurizio has always given prove of his deep engagement in consolidating the friendship between our clubs.

Alfio Longo, President 2004-2005, Daniele Bulgarelli and Nene, his spouse, Don Giovanni Montanari, a very important expert in mosaics and history of Ravenna, attended the dinner of Saturday 19.09.2004 where 4 clubs were represented: Ravenna, Bari, Casamassima and Moscow International. Alfio organized the visit to the Palace “San Giacomo” of Russi in the afternoon of Tuesday 21.09.2004 and participated in this visit together with four other Rotarians.

Maurizio Montanari and Flora, his spouse, two of the people who were in Moscow in September 2003, have joined us for dinner in the traditional restaurant “Ca’ de ven”.

At the occasion of the convivial meeting on 21.09.2004, in the evening, I had the possibility to present both the “Russian” guests and our Music Festival 2005. May be due to the specific aspect of the meeting (convivial) and the following intervention of Prof. Felicita Scapini, the guest speaker, Alfio didn’t present any project and promote any discussion among the representatives of the two clubs. Furthermore there was no translation of the intervention of the guest speaker. In the same evening and later Maurizio apologized to us for these drawbacks.

 

1. Start relationship with some other clubs, Casamassima, Faenza, Pisa and Parma.

• RC Casamassima, Italy, a town close to Bari (District 2120)

This club, founded in 1988, has 50 members.

Andrea Rubino and Arcangelo Procopio, both Past Presidents of this club have attended the Centennial Meeting for one day. But they traveled for more than 1.400 km to prove us the will of their Club to start cooperation with RC Moscow International. I have sent a letter to the President of this Club also to propose a concrete cooperation with them.

• RC Faenza, Italy (District 2070)

This club, founded in 1959, has 74 members.

Even if the “International Museum of Ceramics” of Faenza, unique in the world, is closed every Monday, Maurizio Ossani, President and Giancarlo Bassi, PP and Assistant to DG, were able to organize our visit to this museum on Monday, 20.09.2004. Mrs. Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti, Director of the Museum received us and showed the main pieces of the various exceptional collections exposed in the Museum. After the visit I presented the “Russian” guests, our current activity and exchanged banners with Maurizio Ossani. We expressed also our will to improve our friendship by promoting some concrete projects together.

Then Maurizio Ossani and Giancarlo Bassi accompanied us to visit the “Bottega Gatti”, a famous ancient workshop where some artistic ceramic pieces are produced. Davide Servadei, Rotarian and owner of the workshop received us and we could also assist at the decoration of some pieces produced by a famous American sculptor.

• RC Pisa, Italy (District 2070)

This club, founded in 1934, has 107 members.

The convivial meeting, especially organized for us was attended by several dozen of people, Rotarians and partners. I presented the “Russians”, our current activity and exchanged banners with Vincenzo Consoli, President. Vincenzo expressed his compliments to us for our intense Rotarian activity. He told me confidentially that they were implementing very few projects. But he added that a form of cooperation between our clubs was desirable and he was waiting a concrete proposal from our club.

On Thursday 22.09.2004, at 08:30, Giuseppe Bentivoglio, Rotarian, responsible for all maintenance works of Piazza dei Miracoli, organized for us the visit to the famous leaning tower of Pisa, monument that we had not been able to visit the previous day.

• RC Parma, Italy (District 2070)

This club, founded in 1925, has 113 members.

Thanks to our fellow Lorenzo Mezzadri, Past Rotaract member of RC Parma, we were able to organize the meeting with this Club. Among the clubs met during our tour this is the eighth oldest Italian RC. At our arrival at the hotel we were welcome by Vittorio Brandonisio, Sergeant-at Arms who later brought us to lunch in a very pleasant tennis club. In the evening many people, Rotarians and partners attended the convivial meeting. I presented the “Russian” guests and our current activity, with particular emphasis to our Music Festival 2005. Then Fausto Quintavalla, President and myself exchanged banners and gifts. Then, due to his night departure for Africa, Fausto left before the end of the meeting and the floor was given to Franco Carpanelli, Past DG. Franco gave warm congratulations to us for our intense Rotarian activity. He said that the quality of our Rotarian action is to be considered a sample for many other clubs. Some Rotarians expressed their hope to attend our Music Festival in February 2005.

Further to the meeting with RC Parma, Lorenzo promoted also our visit to Busseto, the town where Giuseppe Verdi was born and started his music activity.

Conclusions

The Centennial Meeting gave the chance firstly to strengthen links within our Club. Furthermore, even if we didn’t have the possibility to exchange many opinions on our projects we had the opportunity to establish good-hearted personal relations among Rotarians of different clubs. In fact not all European Rotary clubs implement as many projects as we do. That is due to the fact that these clubs operate in a quite wealthy society that doesn’t present as many social problems as Russia.

As told to me by Maurizio Casadio, PP of RC Ravenna, our presence in the various meetings held in the week 18-25.09.2004 was highly appreciated the Rotarians.

Moscow, 10.10.2004

 

Leonardo de Angelis

President 2004 - 2005