Translator: Matteo Maggiò Reviewer: Michele Gianella
Silence is the most deafening noise any of us can hear.
The moment you scream
like crazy, asking for help.
It's a time when you're feeling
a cold blanket on you:
you know you're right,
you know that what happened to you was through no fault of your own,
yet no one listens to you.
Or they look at you, but they don't really see you
and pretend they're passing by you with a bang on your shoulder,
saying that "everything will pass".
Your closest friends disappear
when you're in need and through financial hardship,
and you stay with your bad feeling in your heart and stomach
and have to find solutions.
Because for those like me,
a generation that very often was born within companies,
grew up with companies, daughters of entrepreneurs,
the company, the business, is like a brother who grows with you.
And at a certain point, it is entrusted to you
by a father who trusts in your abilities,
even if you are only 16 and then 18, with bills to pay and tight deadlines.
Your dreams end up on the drawer, your studies end,
because 35 years ago having a diploma was not as important as today,
and you take charge of your work, which gradually becomes your passion.
When this is no longer the case,
when all this is put at risk by the actions of others,
you have to make a choice.
Because it is essential for you to understand
that although you formally have the sole responsibility of your business,
you are also responsible for the lives
the families of the people who believed in you
and spend weeks, months, years next to you.
The indifference came from friends, family, institutions,
the whole world.
When my company,
after ten months of suffering and a carnet of checks in the hand,
saw its main customer file for bankruptcy and reopen in 24 hours with another name,
leaving a disaster behind him.
I denounced myself to all Italy's tax agencies,
stating that if, after 42 years,
my father's company could not pay the contributions
was just because we hadn't been paid, so we chose to pay wages over taxes,
we have not found anyone to take charge of the matter
and take it to a higher level.
So what I had chosen as my passion,
and took care of since then, would be destroyed.
And if the company failed, I would also fail:
as a daughter, as a wife, as a mother.
Because beyond a certain threshold, your company merges with your life,
and your life makes room to accomodate your company's needs.
Your son grows up with the company, like you did before him.
In front of all this, I had two choices: the simplest was to "freeze",
wait for everything to collapse because nothing could make a difference,
rules cannot change in Italy,
and the smartest always wins.
But staying there
would mean surrender to those who had hurt me
and raped me in my house:
in my soul, in my ethics
and in my profession, which is a fundamental part of me.
So I chose the second way: fight.
Fight and denounce what had happened,
something that until then had never happened in the Veneto area.
I sued my client, and began to write a diary,
a diary where everything I tried to do day after day,
was put down in words.
So should I have failed to carry on anymore,
my son could read my reasons,
directly from by my pen, and not from other people's voice.
Because I am sick and tired of hearing
that entrepreneurs take their life because they are depressed.
They are desperate!
They have knocked on every imaginable door,
and have not found answers anywhere.
So they pay with the last extreme gesture,
taking their lives,
leaving a circular to their families,
where they relieve them of debts to the state
if they don't touch their inheritance.
So let's stop saying that we are depressed,
because after trying the impossible, a person drops the ball
and leaves their dearest ones.
It's been a hard change.
Changing my kind and docile attitude has not been easy,
even more so swimming upstream.
My diary has become a book, called "I don't want to fail".
The book was welcomed by the good politicians,
got the attention of good politics in our region and then in Rome.
In 2015, I got to have an amendment to the 2016 Economic Stability Law
that implemented a fund:
a fund for delinquent victims of a third-party fraud,
nicknamed "Serenella fund" in the Senate's note of 19 November 2015.
The fund is a loan that lends up to 500.000 euros
for companies that received a "preferential" treatment as mine.
It is to be repaid in ten years,
has a pre-amortization of 24 plus six months,
and is at zero interest.
It is not a final solution: ultimately, money ends.
You repay your current debt,
and the next year the same thing can happen again.
And since it can only be used once,
my awakening is what I wish you,
because this part of my relay race
has a baton.
And the awakening of everyone is to grab that baton
and move it another bit forward so this won't happen anymore,
so that credits are secured, so that companies are secured,
so that people are secured,
whether they are entrepreneurs, workers and employees.
A head without hands goes nowhere,
even less so the hands without head.
Let's have mutual respect:
the company, our local companies are family units,
where entrepreneurs go to their employees' weddings and baptisms.
It wasn't a cheap change for me.
It costed my a lot, as I have lost most of my friends
and most of my family connections.
But I didn't want to be the one who bury his head in the sand anymore.
So every action that we choose to do for the sake of ourselves
has an impact on others.
And the point I'd like to hold
to convince myself I acted in the right way,
is that you can't always be compliant
for the good of others.
Because our lives and our well-being are just as important
as those of people who tell us, "You have to change".
We need to change
when we feel like inside of us, and we have a good reason to do so.
All this has given me a regional fund,
which in 2017, for a window of ten months,
only for entrepreneurs in Veneto,
has created a fund much like the national one.
It allowed me to change jobs after saving my company:
Today 24 employees work there, thanks to my brother's wise management.
I work with a group of professionals
who also take care of the dreams of entrepreneurs and companies.
They taught me to study, read and trust in what I do
and to believe we can give roots to dreams.
Donna Moderna magazine put me in a list of 100 women
who did something great in the last 30 years.
Honestly, I didn't expect to get that far,
just as I didn't expect
to get to Brussels' following training courses
where you can really breathe a different Europe
while retaining my pride of being an Italian.
We have an association called "La stanza delle idee" (Room of Ideas)
which takes care of entrepreneurs like me,
But after spending four years
hearing situations like mine, stories like mine,
which almost never have a happy ending,
I couldn't bear it anymore.
So on December 31, 2018, after ten years, I decided to close it,
because I was fed up with other people's sad stories.
I want to live my life, my awakening, my satisfactions,
what I earned.
On January 1st, a message arrived on Messenger
from Eleonora, the lady you see on this photo.
She wrote: "I am Eleonora. I live in a small village in Sardinia.
In October, my husband took his life and left me with these three children.
I don't ask help for myself,
I just want to know how did you create the association,
so that no one in my land can suffer what I went through.
Seven days later William Beozzo,
in representation of Mercatone Uno's suppliers,
got there, asked if the crazy actions done four years earlier
could be repeated by someone else.
And so we set the machinery back in motion,
and this year in June
we managed to change the amendment to the Serenella fund,
which today is the staple legal tool for Mercatone Uno suppliers.
And so me saying "Enough of it!" has become a new awakening
and I really think, had I to say enough again
I will go through another one,
so I better be quiet,
happy with what I accomplished,
happy with who I am
and happy with the time I will still be allowed to improve.
I wish you a happy awakening, I wish you a daily awakening.
From little things, like cooking dinner for your loved ones,
to taking a piece of the relay race of those around you,
because life is wonderful, but surprises may be in store for us all.
And since we do not know when the bad ones come,
let's enjoy the good ones
but let's prepare to be supporters
and allow ourselves to be supported in moments of need.
Good awakening to all, thank you.
(Applause)