We, the children who never lost hope | Tommaso Salaroli | TEDxMilano

A young voice, but with a lot to share, is the one of Tommaso Salaroli, a dreamer who speaks of hope and desire to change even by choosing an uncomfortable position. ""Scomodo"", the student magazine founded by Tommaso, is the students' magazine most widely read in Europe and was born from a group of "lost children" who actually never lost hope.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

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During an institutional trip
with the Mayor

and other politicians of my town,

I had a terrible attack of gastritis.

My stomach hurt so bad

that I decided to take a plane
and return to Rome, to the hospital.

I was hospitalized for a week,

and it actually was
a very fun and relaxing week

because they put me in a room
with five other patients,

aged 65 on average,

who spent days and nights

telling me lots of stories and adventures.

Imagine, the five combined
were over 300 years old,

so imagine the number of stories to tell.

I was listening them,
intrigued by the fact

that despite being ordinary people,

each of them told me
about a different world,

more or less generous,
interesting or exciting.

Here they are.

(Laughter)

What really struck me
was that all of them,

be it the age or the number
of accumulated disappointments,

those gentlemen had stopped believing
in the power of change.

"Nothing will change," they said,
"and if it does, it's for the worse."

And from that moment,
the goal of my hospital stay

changed drastically.

I didn't have to heal anymore,
I was maybe already cured.

I had to convince them, before going home,

that something, somehow,
can always be done.

I then spoke about those people
who do not settle,

those who don't remain indifferent,

and choose to turn ideas, dreams, hopes
in real life projects.

And I talked about myself,

who join and engaged, in my teenage years,

to those movements
that grow and die like mushrooms

because they fail to build
real participatory processes,

the movements of pure protest.

And once I got this,
I chose to take a different path,

I made a small choice,
which changed my life.

I turned my desire to engage myself,
participate and be the change

in a concrete, literally
"readable" project.

I founded, with a schoolmate,
a great publishing project,

and a movement around this
that on a project basis

gives room to the ideas
of almost 400 boys and girls,

turning them into reality.

Scomodo [Uncomfortable],
the newspaper name,

is a monthly magazine,
intentionally printed on paper,

covering news and culture
in more than 100 pages, every month.

Covers sport important signatures:

this is Altan, and these
are some of the others.

And you might not believe it,
but boys read it, and a lot too.

The goal is to re-educate a generation

to get interested, involved

and feel an active part
of the society they live in.

After this, Scomodo,
which is a very complex project,

can be summarized by two main viewpoints:

one is participation,
the desire to take action.

Articles are discussed together:

we collectively decide
what to talk about and how,

and the initiatives -

from lectures to concerts,
that fund the magazine -

are designed to make attendees
the protagonists of an experience

and no longer just a user.

And the urge, the other hand,

to build the cultural
and social alternatives we miss

and do it with the newspaper.

When we think it's not enough to say

that we can have access
to all the information we want

but we must teach ourselves to do it.

And we do it by filling
with content, ideas and people,

empty, abandoned city spaces.

This is Flaminio Stadium.

It is a 25,000 seats stadium
in central Rome,

25 times today's venue - it is huge.

700 of us occupied it
at four in the afternoon

to suggest a possible different future
for so big and beautiful place.

It was talked about a lot.

In the first months of the project,

while we sought to put ideas in order,

no one had told us
what it could have become.

No one had ever prepared us

to the amount of emotions,
hardships and problems

we would have to learn to deal with.

And do you know why I'm here?

Because we never asked for it.

We wake up each morning
and choose to get involved,

without too many questions
on the growth of a project

that no one feels like her own,
and we all feel like ours.

Scomodo stems from this very idea:

a simple, powerful idea

that became shortly after
a plan to achieve it.

We held the first meeting,
then printed the first number

and people began to speak about us.

Newspapers wrote about us.

In high schools and universities,

students had stickers
with our covers on their helmets.

They read and spread the magazine.

In the first year, we grow
from 53 to 440 members.

We're Italy's most participated
cultural reality.

We end up distributing 7500 free copies,
each month, in Rome,

at 200 points of sale
and in 13 other Italian cities.

Scomodo is Europe's
most printed student magazine.

Now with a little more structure
and organization, we work on 13 projects,

some with important partners:

Internazionale, Treccani, Green Peace.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

And we work on the project launch,

and on starting chapters
in four other Italian cities.

After three years of meeting
in parks, squares, bars,

we're now even building a space,

and it will be a space for Rome,
a place of everybody for everybody,

with a one-of-its-kind process
of shared building,

that already involves nearly 800 people,

in building a new place
that will address almost all the desires

of those, like us, who live our town,

which is Rome, if it wasn't clear.

(Laughter)

Behind all this is a bunch of freaks,
nerds, losers, klutzes -

28 out of 30 have vertigo, I swear.

We're ordinary people,
we could be our children,

we could be the ones
seated next to you, or you at our age.

I say this to point out, we never felt

like we are something more than others,

if not the hope of contributing
to turn this country

into the one we meant to live in.

Often, while running behind this hope,

we feel a bit like
Peter Pan's lost children,

dreaming an insland that's not there,
brighter and shinier,

who acknowledges the future
investing in the present.

But indeed, the island is not there,
it's away from reality.

So please allow me, dear TEDx attendees,

to say that if we feel lost children,
perhaps it's not entirely our fault.

Our generation comes from decades

of cultural, economical,
political divestments,

away from education, culture and,
I dare say, also democracy.

As a result, a generation came out
of objectively depressed kids.

Look around you: we're apathetic,
indifferent, ignorant,

Bookstores close,
we don't read, we don't care;

theaters close, newspaper close,
we're not breathing air anymore.

And no one cares.

Well, instead of getting angry
and join the choir of No,

we tried, and later found out,

a toolbox to grow up
in civil society, among adults,

the very adults we used to be
so mad at before.

Scomodo exists also thanks
to our parents' support,

of subscribers' support,

of all the people

who never stopped believing in us.

And knowing that when things go south,
when everything seems to be over,

someone's there, ready to say,

"No worries, you will make it.
Indeed, we will make it"

It's not just important:
it's everything, it's fantastic.

Without a community behind it,
a project is nothing, is not really real.

I say all this with a goal and a dream:

the goal is to convey to you

the importance and the potential for hope,

as hope motivates our choices in real life

and changes, even huge ones,
came out of a combination of choices,

And the world does need those changes,

the world doesn't want to stay the same,
the world needs to transform,

the world needs innovation,

the world needs us to believe in him.

The world needs to improve,
and we need the world to improve.

And my little dream is for you to join,

once out of that door,
and contribute to do this.

Do it for yourselves, do it for us,
do it for any one you want to,

but do it, because we need it.

And because, after all,
my name is Tommasino

and I'm not actually good
at anything special.

But I took a train, came here

and I'm so emotional.

And I only did that to say,
maybe you can what you wish for.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you, thank you.

(Applause)