Posts Tagged ‘ACTION’

A Healthy Mobility implies also a Healthy Eating

Written by alessandra.gorini@y4pt.org on . Posted in All Y4PT Chapters, Y4PT World

Y4PT-NutriEnergy-World-Campaign-Logo

We live in a very special century made of an interconnected world: the world is melting and going faster.

From a transport point of view, this fast interconnection is bringing us to wear sneakers on a daily basis and to cover longer distances in cities turning increasingly larger.

Urban dress code and urban street food are just some of the concepts, that, always a little more, are being part of our urban lifestyles. Dressing is casual chic, or just casual, meals are made of bunch of different styles of fast foods, but the key words are always the same: fast, rapid, rush, no time, time consuming …

In fact people are adapting; but while adapting to this fast pace, the risk is to lose the basic learning and behavior, that can permit us to live well in this often hostile or at least health-unfriendly context.

People are adapting because of the lifestyle paradigm coming from a few economic giants, transforming the life of millions, are pushing us to embrace; we, the people, are just adapting, trying to find “street” and homemade solutions to live our lives in a better way with the little provided.

Useless to say that this is bringing also a massification into our customs and traditions, a massification of our habits and daily routines. Useless to say that for the majority with poor or little education, this is making things just bitter and harder.

But, in this process of grey massification we’d love to see an opportunity; the one of creating a quiet revolution, just adopting, healthier habits, healthier daily performances, to reach out our daily targets and goals, living a simpler life of which a #HealthyMobility is part of and consequently access the right energy to embrace this Challenge and a better way of living.

13221022_842710449205813_4984008960524697624_n

We should all try to seek positive possibilities while negative switches are taking place in the world. We need to adapt contrasting the changes: the more we do so, the more powerful and successful we will be. It is a matter of evolution: transformists win.

“It’s essential that we arm future generations with the life skills they urgently need in order to lead healthier, happier, more productive liv
es”. (Jamie Oliver)

This is an Era in which food is becoming central to the life of people!

13227137_1165053796872912_5625766058211426323_n

 

So let’s try to see how ourselves, we can turn things in our favor and in favor of the people around us, teaching them, while the world seems becoming grayer, how to change and embrace colors and positive lifestyle habits starting from our daily routines!

But first, let’s talk about the empty energy that we are acquiring through processed food; the one you find in supermarkets.
Food in supermarkets is mostly processed: if you see how little space is devoted to fresh fruits and vegetables, instead on how much is taken by packed and canned items, you already can get an idea of what the food industry is willing us to consume.
Second problem, while you are in a supermarket: reading labels of those packed items: you will have the impression, almost all, to be suddenly victim of a blindness or poor eyesight.

No, is not the case: is just the industry that does not want you to read the labels: they do not want you to see that sugar lays hidden under different names (by the way, there are at least 61 different names for sugar listed on food labels. These include common names, such as sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, as well as barley malt, dextrose, maltose and rice syrup, among others…) , or that Monosodium Glutammate, so dangerous for your brain, all the artificial colorants, preservatives, emulsifiers, and all gender of chemical products in your nice package you are about to buy, to bring a bit of chemistry in your already polluted organism. More than 3.000 chemicals are hidden in your canned, boxed, frozen concoctions.

maxresdefault

Would you eat your favorite breakfast cereal if you knew that it contained Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT), a product also used in jet fuel and embalming fluid? Can you imagine grilling your low fat veggie burger if you found out that its main ingredient is Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)?

This seems a nightmare! I already breath badly in the morning when I wake up, because I smell immediately car pollution when I open the windows and then my cereals are full of nice oily products that are entering my mouth? But wasn’t somebody suggesting us, perhaps our parents? To open the windows and breathe the fresh air in the morning while preparing a nice glass of tepid water with lemon? Was that a dream or I remember the nice flavor of real homemade pancakes prepared with non-contaminated flour, not genetically modified, in my kitchen with my father? And this was not even so long ago…

How did we permit the industry to drive our lives at this point? And if we do not want to be driven, the only solution is the one of abandoning the cities? Do you find all of this normal? Should we start bulking the system upside down?

How could is this possible that they are able to cancel our memories of tradition and positive attitude, selling us poisons and we, accepting it?

So, you see, is a holistic vision of life that these decision-makers are trying to cut off from.

“Access to good, fresh, nutritious food is every child’s human right, but currently we’re failing our children. Millions of kids are eating too much of the wrong food, while millions more don’t get enough of the good stuff to let them grow and thrive. We need to unite as one strong, single voice to force governments and businesses to create a healthier, happier world for the future.
We’re currently facing a global obesity epidemic, with 42 million children under the age of five either overweight or obese across the world. The bottom line is the next generation will live shorter lives than their parents if nothing is done to rectify these alarming stats.” (Jamie Oliver)

Y4PT-Food-Revolution-Milan-2015

Ferrovie Nord Milano (FNM – Italy), is Y4PT’s newly acquired Honorary Founding Member

Written by alessandra.gorini@y4pt.org on . Posted in All Y4PT Chapters, Y4PT World

CHczuQoW8AAbwZn

Ferrovie Nord Milano (FNM) (Milan, Italy), is Y4PT’s newly acquired Honorary Founding Member: since last year this active Company has decided to support and sustain the activities of our volunteer NGO, firstly in Milan, during the UITP World Congress and Exhibition that took place in June 2015 and now all the way through Montreal 2017, where the UITP World Transport Summit will take place.

The FNM Group: its main mission is transport

FNM is the main transport and mobility group in Lombardy. It is the largest private Italian operator in this sector. Its mission is to meet communication and mobility requirements of individuals and companies and to take up the challenge of “moving” people, goods and information. In fact, the Group has broadened and diversified the scope of its activities on other markets, including ICT, energy and sustainable mobility.

Ferrovie Nord Milano (FNM) was created in 1877 to build and operate the railway lines in the Lombardy region. The railway network was developed in the North-West of Lombardy to connect the city of Milan with the towns of Novara, Varese, Laveno, Como and Erba-Asso, by expanding the existing lines and acquiring additional lines.

In May 2011, Trenitalia-LeNORD become Trenord. Joint alliance between Trenitalia and FNM Group was born in Lombardy the first and largest Italian operator specializing in regional public transport by rail.

Trenord is so, the result of an integration with FNM, with over 130 years of local presence and an entrepreneurial tradition which provided a solid economic and financial position, and the largest national operator, FS, of known technological skills and operational. This will certainly allow the new company to consolidate in Lombardy the best experiences and become an actor of reference in the European scenario.

While remaining faithful and consistent to its original mission related to the railway transport field, in the last few years, FNM has been diversifying its areas of operations. In fact, a transformation process was launched to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the liberalization of the public services sector, which is gradually developing increasing, and to expand its scope and activities on the national and international market.

Is exactly in this optic that FNM had manifested various time the will to support Y4PT, not only as a Honorary Founding Member, but also in creating new innovative initiatives and supporting the ideas of visionary young people to be applied in their field of reference:

FNM philosophy with Y4PT, is the one to “YOUTHLY move” people, assets and information thus meeting new mobility and communication requirements for individuals and businesses.

While FNM has been historically linked to the development of the rail system in Lombardy, after the liberalization of public services, it has diversified and expanded its activities on the national and on the European Market.

????????????????????????????????????

FNM operates the passenger transport system for the regional and metropolitan areas of Milan, the connection to the Malpensa airport, and freight transport in Italy and in Europe; moreover, it operates and develops its own railway network, as well as networks and services in the fields of energy, telecommunications and sustainable mobility.

 

andrea-gibelli-in-visita-a-olgiate-olona-inserita-in-galleri-151382.610x431

We had a nice talk after the UITP World Congress and Exhibition – Milan 2015, with Mr. Andrea GIBELLI, actual President of FNM, with their communication officers and public relations responsible person on the future of activities to be developed thanks to FNM in the forecast of our future 2016-2017 activities.

Mr. GIBELLI, graduated in Architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan, has been Secretary-General of the Council of the Lombardy Region and Director-General of the Presidency from March 2013 to May 2015, and  vice president of the Lombardy Region from 2010 to 2013. Member of Parliament 2001-2010 and 1994-1996, he was a member of the Commission for Transport and Telecommunications, the General Affairs Committee and the Industry. He was a member of the board of Cogeme Spa and FNMA Spa.

Cogeme is a holding company wholly owned by the municipality, one of the first in Italy, and operates in the field of public utilities. Thanks to the establishment of LGH, along with other public companies, Cogeme offers a competitive range of services (gas, electricity, water, telecommunications, waste), while maintaining a strong local roots.

FNMA Spa active on the market on the field of tourism-social’s private transport sector, operates using 32 rental licenses, some of which are intended to vehicles equipped to transport disabled travelers.

Y4PT is in Ireland!

Written by alessandra.gorini@y4pt.org on . Posted in All Y4PT Chapters, Y4PT India, Y4PT World

 

The Youth is full of creative ideas and Y4PT will confidently put all these ideas in practice for leading tomorrow’s world and revolutionize paradigms.

 

20150816_113009 20150815_143444 20150815_121113 20150812_150030 20150813_211148 20150814_144358

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Y4PT, the  Foundation created under the patronage of UITP,

 (International Association for Public Transport), strives to facilitate healthy sustainable cities and transport through the Youth worldwide and this time is in Sligo, during the Fleadh Cheoil Festival of Music on the Irish west coast to bring the Healthy Mobility Challenge there in collaboration with Bus Eireann (the proud sponsor of Fleadh Cheoil).

 

 

20150815_114434

20150815_113913

20150814_163048

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Y4PT Ambassadors are witnessing the Bus Operations of Bus Eireann, during the biggest Music Festival of Ireland. They are undertaking their first action of “Check Up”  which is a way to be involved and give their suggestions, their new innovative vision to build a constructive dialogue with the Public Transport Operators.

 

Bus Eireann was formed in 1987 as a subsidiary of CIE to provide bus services throughout Ireland with the exception of Dublin City.

Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) is Ireland’s national public transport provider. Over 230 million journeys are made annually on their network of national, regional​, local and urban services across Iarnród ÉireannDublin Bus and Bus Éireann.

 

Ireland is the place of Tradition by definition and the Music Festival Fleadh Cheoil is the proof of it:  300.000 local people are gathering to the Festival from the country itself and from abroad, to join this important music competition. The Fleadh Cheoil is the world’s biggest and best traditional Irish music festival that will take place between the 10 and 17th of August: a week-long jamboree of music, song and dance. Few places in the western world have managed to maintain their musical traditions as successfully as Ireland has.

 

If we translate Fleadh Cehoil means The Music Festival of Ireland and that is exactly what it is. . It is a celebration of the new ways for doing the old things. And what a better way to start undertaking Y4PT first “Check Up” on the mark of Y4PT Healthy Mobility  conducting a Survey among young people, Bus Eireann Customers and Festival passionate participants?

 

We feel it is really important to promote Public Transport education as the most effective approach to fostering sustainable-mobility-based lifestyles.

 

Y4PT and Bus Eireann are conducingt a Survey during the Fleadh Cheoil Music Festival in Sligo. On the mark of the Healthy Mobility Campaign,  this Survey will give responses and will promote Public Transport as a better way to live a healthy life and build a consciousness about environmental friendly cities and societies.

 

 

WHY A YOUTH PUBLIC TRANSPORT EVENT DURING A MUSIC FESTIVAL?

 

Music is a universal language that unites people: Contemporary society’s emphasis on the instant gratification, materialism and humanism: it is diametrically opposed to the tenets put forth by the ancients.

Contemporary popular culture, with its predilection for what is fashionable, trendy and external, has become increasing superficial, even intolerant of music that espouses higher ideals or focuses on achieving a higher consciousness.

Irish Culture and the Sligo Fleadh Cheoil festival reciprocate the above statement; it is the manifestation of how trends and tradition can live beautifully together.

At Y4PT, we feel that the right combination of tradition and clever trends can have a huge success in this world of ours.

Using the power of music and language we’d like to bridge cultural difference, promote understanding and address sustainability.

Y4PT will bring its international Ambassadors devoted to Public Transport, from India, Bahrain, UK, Italy and Colombia to promote a mutual understanding on a sustainable way of living across the planet, combined with innovative way of communication to reinforce the message of Bus Eireann that is positioning itself on the international scene and is embracing an innovative young united lifestyle.

This will be a high-level opportunity for them to network and explore the positioning and impact of Bus Eireann in the context of sustainability, Mobility, Education, Lifestyle and innovation.

During the Festival Y4PT Ambassadors will be among people and find the opportunity to develop the First Y4PT “ Check Up”, they will also witness and improve their experience with new cultures connecting with different people along the way.

These international days will represent the opportunity to showcase the outstanding Young Representatives of Y4PT and their contribution towards Public Transport.

We welcomed Transaid during their bike Charity Marathon

Written by alessandra.gorini@y4pt.org on . Posted in All Y4PT Chapters, Y4PT Belgium & EU, Y4PT England, Y4PT England in London, Y4PT Media, Y4PT World

downloadTransaid is an international development charity. They identify, champion, implement and share local transport solutions to improve access to basic services and economic opportunity for people in Africa and in developing countries. Transaid was founded by Save the Children and The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport and our Patron is HRH The Princess Royal. 

 

Charitable volunteers from across the transport industry cycled to Brussels at the weekend, in a bid to raise £75,000 for Transaid.

The 34-strong team had already raised £45,000 by the time they set off on the 340km ride on the 12 September  and are confident of reaching their fundraising target once the remaining sponsorship money is collected.

Riders set off from the Freight Transport Association’s head office in Tunbridge Wells and headed for Dover where they caught the ferry to Calais. Their adventure continued through France where even the most experienced cyclists were challenged by a very strong head wind. The group celebrated the end of this particularly difficult day in Bruges where they enjoyed a well-earned break and glass of beer, completing the final 74 miles to Brussels on September 14, finishing at the city’s iconic Grand Place.

Upon arrival the cyclists were greeted by a party from Y4PT and UITP, where we  put on a champagne and chocolate reception. We have been very happy to give them a moment of reward and fun after such a challenge and great action!

Sir Peter Hendy, a new Trustee!

Transaid  appointed  recently four new trustees with a wealth of experience in the health, transport and logistics sectors to help govern the charity as it continues to grow in size and scope.

One of them is Sir Peter Hendy CBE, Commissioner of Transport for London and  our UITP President.

Speaking on behalf of the trustees, Sir Peter, said “It’s a privilege to be involved with an organisation which implements truly life-changing solutions in developing countries.”

Sir Peter started his transport career in 1975 as a London Transport graduate trainee. In 2001 he served as Transport for London’s Managing Director of Surface Transport, before taking on his current role in 2006. Sir Peter was instrumental in preparing for the successful operation of London’s transport during the 2012 Olympics and was elected President of the International Public Transport Association in 2013. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honours list, having been awarded a CBE in 2006.

download (5)The first Transaid was established within Save the Children (UK) as a voluntary group of transport industry individuals. Peter Linney, who had just retired from a senior position in British Rail, took up the day to day management of Transaid. The British Railways Board provided office space and administrative support. Over the next 10 years, Transaid volunteers, from organisations such as TNT, P&O and the British Army, carried out a number of short-term projects. In those days, the focus was largely on emergency operations, rather than long-term development, and projects included a review of the potential to handle containerised emergency supplies through Mozambique ports and the specifications for an emergency ambulance service in Swaziland.  The transport management handbook for Save The Children was also written.

 

Thinking long-term

In the early 1990’s the founders began to think about the role of transport in development, and particularly how lack of transport impacted on the delivery of essential services such as health and education. Research with the Ministry of Health in Ghana led to the realization that a lack of management skills, rather than a lack of transport, was causing a bottleneck in the delivery of everyday health services.

A two-year Save the Children project started in the Ministry of Health in Ghana in early 1993. This was the first long-term programme of its kind by Transaid and marked a shift in focus towards sustainable development.

The future

Transaid is now beginning to focus more intensively on livelihoods work, based on the knowledge that Africa needs an efficiently run transport system in order to provide better opportunities to trade and make a living. Improving the efficiency, safety, availability and professionalism of commercial transport will create work opportunities in the industry, reduce transport costs, open up trade and make basic goods and services more available and affordable.

This is what is meant by sustainable development, looking at the root causes of problems and building the skills and knowledge of local people to tackle them. It isn’t quick and it isn’t easy, but we believe it is the only way we will make a lasting difference.

However, the amount of high profile natural disasters in recent years has brought attention back to the relationship between logistics and emergency aid and Transaid has played an advisory role in the development of two new, humanitarian initiatives – the development of the new Fritz Institute Certificate in Humanitarian Logistics and providing advice to the new CILT Humanitarian Logistics and Emergency Programme (HELP).

One thing which remains unchanged is transport’s importance to the health and wealth of all nations. Trucks, trains and ships are so highly visible on the world’s roads, railways and seas, but the essential goods and services that they carry, and the millions of people who work behind the scenes to get them where they need to go, remain largely invisible and forgotten.

Transaid has been built on the knowledge that skilled people make transport work. It’s up to us to find ways to build those skills where they’ll make the most difference and to continue to harness the skills of the best in the transport industry.

download (1) download (2)

download (4)

Y4PT, advancing on the fundamental unemployment issue

Written by alessandra.gorini@y4pt.org on . Posted in Y4PT Belgium & EU, Y4PT Belgium & EU in Brussels, Y4PT Media, Y4PT Spain, Y4PT World

UITPA few days ago I met Novia Salcedo representatives, whose headquarters are in Bilbao.  At our siege in Brussels, we talked about creating a possible partnership for many interesting different projects , all related to a fundamental issue of these years: the situation of helplessness and youth unemployment which is an unacceptable scourge for the people of the second decade of 21st century.

The idea is to be on board for the International Campaign for Youth Employment Decade 2013-2016 and, secondly, to have young people from Spain developing and collaborating with us on the light of our Employouth tool’ development.

The International Campaign for Youth Employment Decade 2013-2016  is an initiative of the civil society born in Spain,  with an objective to generate an international movement of reflection, thought, debate and action, that provides ideas, content and solutions for the unemployment situation or the situation of no decent employment that millions of youths are experiencing in hundreds of places across the world.
The final objective of this Campaign is for the United Nations General Assembly to declare 2019-2028 ‘Youth Employment Decade’ as an opportunity to drive the economic and social transformation of organizations and countries.

Novia Salcedo believe that the solution to the big problems that global society is facing needs to go hand in hand with big and feasible dreams. Y4PT do believe so, too!

In this dream, action-solution, they suggest beginning with a proposal for economic and social change on three levels – people-organisations-society-, towards one more inclusive. And they make this proposal taking as a guiding thread the integration of youths in the human, economic and social development by launching specific actions on a global scope, compatible and complementary with those of a local scope in order to reduce youth unemployment that we all face across the world. Therefore, they are talking about an important exercise of Social Innovation at a global level. We’d love to be on board with our Y4PT Foundation.

To successfully carry out this ambitious project it is necessary to reconcile many allies,  some within reach of NSF but others not. That is why we need the cooperation of multiple local and global agents, governmental and no-governmental, that go along with us through the different facets of the project, with a multidirectional cooperation model that help us achieve the objectives we are pursuing.

To lay out social innovations of this significance requires a high impact operation, that is exciting and in which we can all be involved. Given the extreme severity of youth unemployment we can no longer look away.

It is time to decide. We owe them answers.

Concretely,Y4PT will be also very happy  to accompany for a long period one or more youth from Spain, selected by Novia Salcedo, in order for them to start learning technical and transversal competencies, developing our Employouth International Job Bank in the field of  Sustainable Mobility. This Youth from Spain will undergo with us thorugh a geographical mobility and an exchange of knowledge with all the other Y4PT representatives around the world and by doing sowe are  offering them a kind of worldwide “ coaching and learning” experience.

Alessandra Gorini

What is the Youth Employment Decade?  

The Youth Employment Decade expects that the geographic area where it is implemented includes municipalities, regions, countries, public and private entities, non-profit and profit organisations, networks related to youth and/or employment, academic institutions, religious institutions, unions, governments, etc. that are developing activities within this framework.

That is, the Decade will take place anywhere in the world where, through different initiatives and activities promoted by the civil society or in cooperation with the public sector, there is a wish to join in the achievement of its objectives, including:

  1. Make a call to attention at the highest political and social levelabout the current situation of youth unemployment across the world.
    2. To promote efforts in order to comply with the international commitments entered into with regards to employment and decent jobs.
    3. To open participating spaces and intergenerational and intercultural dialogue among youth and the political and social authorities to address the issue of unemployment with the challenges and the potentials of youths themselves.
    4. Suggest priorities, content and lines of action in the political, social and economic fields to combat youth unemployment and no decent jobs, including gender discrimination.
    5. Point the attention toward policies and proactive activities that guarantee sustainable management of the access of youth to the labour market in the long term, both in terms of quality and quantity.
    6. To promote research, creation of knowledge and interchange of good practices with regards to youth employment.
    7. To undertake action to increase awareness of the society as a whole about the risks and consequences of youth unemployment and its role in the eradication of poverty and in the economic and social transformation and growth of countries.
    8. To achieve the commitment, cooperation and investment from all agents involved during not only the decade 2019-2028, but also beyond.

In the mid-term these objectives will be transformed into results, preferably quantifiable (so as to never again return to massive unemployment, sudden changes of income distribution and generational inequality, indicators of social cohesion and participation, public welfare, no decent jobs, gender discrimination, etc.). And create an organisational structure able to respond and guarantee the celebration of the Youth Employment Decade in the world in accordance with their objectives and results through the activities, projects or programs that are defined for each level -local, regional, national, international- involved in it.

UITP2