This year, we decided to organize something different from usual to celebrate the advent of Christmas with our Erasmus students: a Christmas Dinner “old Bologna style”, which was met with huge success and will now always have its place on the ESN calendar.

On Thursday 11th of December, 75 international students and ESN staff met at the Centro Anziani Andrea Costa (a recreational centre for the elderly) for a festive dinner of traditional Bolognese food and including a charity lottery. The venue kindly let us decorate their room lavishly with fairy lights, candles and tinsel to create the perfect Christmas atmosphere. Crescentine with prosciutto crudo and other Bolognese delicacies were on the menu – happily prepared for us by local grannies - along with a fine selection of cheeses for vegetarians, and of course lots of Brindisinos. The dinner cost € 10 for Erasmus students, and ESN Bologna donated € 2 per participant to Give20. Additional € 100 were raised from the lottery which took place after the dinner, giving a total amount of € 250. The prizes for the lottery were partly given as gifts from ESN Bologna staff members, partly bought in local shops. Marketa kindly wrote us an accompanying letter about the partnership between ESN and UNICEF for this fundraising project, which will be very useful for the upcoming events: we are already planning a fundraising treasure hunt and maybe also a short City Marathon :-)