About
Sport is a vocation to well-being and health, but it also means social inclusion and brotherhood, and therefore it can turn into an opportunity to reflect on why we, Europeans, are together.
The "Paths of Memory" project, which aims to involve sport enthusiasts, especially young people, consists of a series of sporting events to be shared as a lighthearted collective experience in places bearing significant memory:
- CORSA PER L'EUROPA, Gorizia-Nova Gorica: 6 km and 12 km foot race in the city of the wall that separates Italy from Slovenia.
- NATALONGA PER L'EUROPA, Ventotene: A 1700 meters swim in open water, from the island of Santo Stefano to the beach of Calanave.
- COURSE POUR L’EUROPE, Strasboutg-Kehl: 3 km and 10 km foot race along the French and German banks of the Rhine.
These three events are open to all. Participants will enjoy both competitive spirit and a healthy and emotional group activity. In order to achieve a result, sport always requires great motivation, combined with commitment and sacrifice. Sport promotes a sense of belonging and solidarity, provides the drive to overcome one’s own limits, or the ones represented by geographical borders. With the listed initiatives, EuropaNow!, together with UISP-Gorizia and Unis vers le sport, intends to couple the named core sport values with the historic significance attributed to the places. Gorizia is the city where the "last" fallen wall of Europe still separate the Italian side from the Slovenian one; Ventotene is the island where the Italian Fascist regime confined Altiero Spinelli, the author of the "Manifesto for a Free and United Europe"; finally, Strasbourg and Kehl, represent a symbol of French-German reconciliation, putting an end to centuries of conflicts. Places of our memory, where we will run and swim to remember and reflect together, till we reach the finish line of greater awareness. So that we can create, through sport, the Europe we want.
Meet Our Associations
EuropaNow!, leader of the project, was founded in 2018 with the aim of countering the resurgence of nationalisms with a feeling of European patriotism. It pursues this goal through bottom-up actions, such as keeping alive the permanent campaign for the distribution of European flags and organizing or participating in sporting and musical events,
After the success of the first two editions and in the midst of the preparation of the third, europaNow! decided to take the "Natalonga per l'Europa" event beyond the local dimension, which by its very nature has a European vocation, and to use the 'Ventotene model' to create other sporting events in places that have in common with the island the fact of representing symbolic places of a shared history and memory.
UISP - Italian Union Sport for all - is an association for social and sports promotion. Founded in 1948, it aims to extend the right to sport to all citizens: at the centre of UISP is the person, women and men of all ages. In particular, UISP - Gorizia has been operating in the city since 1975 and has been organizing the VIVICITTÁ sporting initiative for over 25 years, in collaboration with the Slovenian sports clubs of Nova Gorica and the "Corsa che unisce", a foot race for children and junior high schools with a cross-border route between Italy and Slovenia.
Unis vers le sport is an association of education, integration and international solidarity in the field of sport, which since its creation in 2001 has operated with the conviction that sporting activity transmits positive values and essential benefits to education and integration of young people.
Unis Vers Le Sport is a multi-sports organization with trainers able to teach different activities, adapted to the interested public and works to facilitate access not only to sports but also to education in the suburbs of Strasbourg.