Theme: Porous Borders

Since the beginning of time, humanity has always been “in motion”. Some people move searching for new horizons, others to escape conflict, poverty, hunger, persecution or the effects of climate change, but for many, it is often a complex multitude of such factors driving their movement. Nowadays we are facing one of the greatest human flows in history. According to the United Nations reports, wars and economic crisis push 33,000 people daily to move from their countries of origin in search of peace and fundamental human rights. Women, men and children die every day on the long journey to salvation in an attempt to cross seas and borders; the physical, political and cultural barriers before them.

Faced with this situation, the TEDx Community feels the need to contribute to the international discussion around such an urgent issue, which has both local and global consequences. For the first time ever then, six Team Organisers of TEDx events, from different cities in Europe, have decided to tackle this topic together in a single format, departing from different geographical and cultural perspectives.

The project, based on the Relay Race Format, consists of a series of TEDx Salon events organised in Europe, which over the course of one day, will connect and communicate these perspectives via a live streaming platform, sharing the speakers’ humanitarian perspectives.
Through six local events – TEDxCesena, TEDxGenova, TEDxReggioEmilia, TEDxRoma, TEDxMünchen and TEDxLeicester – Italy, England and Germany will discuss a theme around refugees called “Porous Borders”: a concept that goes far beyond understanding borders, as many currently do, to simply be spaces of linear geometry, but rather wanting to take on a redefinition: one of porosity as complexity.

And yet, what is a border? Is it a thing that protects us or divides us?
Does it pose risk or opportunity?

On this day we invite the speakers and our communities to explore this theme from different points of view, offering a neutral dimension to discuss a global and complex topic in a transversal and innovative way.

Cesenalab
Via martiri della libertà 14/C
Cesena, Emilia-Romagna, 47521
Italy

Michela Paschetto

Nurse

Michela, 35 years old, nurse. After a few years of experience in Italian hospitals, she decided to leave the country to go on a mission with the Italian NGO EMERGENCY. She spent 7 years in Afghanistan working as a medical coordinator in surgical centres for war victims, paediatrics and maternal departments in both hospitals and field programme. In 2017, during the Mosul operation, she moved to Iraq, where EMERGENCY was running a Surgical Emergency Hospital for war victims in Erbil. A few months ago, Michela came back to Italy, becoming part of the Medical Division Coordination of EMERGENCY.