It is not only Italian football that is popular with the Maltese, Italian ambassador to Malta Dr Paolo Trabalza told The Malta Independent on Sunday, but also Italian history.

He was referring to the two competitions launched by the Italian embassy to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Garibaldi’s birth – one for artists and the other for schoolchildren.

“The competition for Maltese artists was held on Garibaldi’s date of birth – 4 July. We thought there would only be a small number of participants. We were wrong as more than 70 artists participated with about 85 abstracts.”

Anthony Degabriele, Education Officer (EO) of Italian from the Curriculum management department and the Education Division, said the second competition was for schools. Sixteen schools presented different themes commemorating Garibaldi.

A prize-giving ceremony sponsored by Middle Sea Insurance was held at St Theresa Junior Lyceum last October with the participation of the director of the Italian Institute, Bernadette Gerada.

“The standard was so high that we had to ask our sponsor to double the cost of the prizes from Lm450 to Lm900. We ended up awarding one first prize, two second prizes, and four third prizes,” said Dr Trabalza.

“What truly impressed us was that this was not something forced on the students. They looked like they were really enjoying it and were living the culture. They contacted foreign institutions for information, wrote plays on Garibaldi, a few students cooked Italian food, and even a band participated in the event.”

Mr Degabriele said the only drawback is that there are not enough Italian language teachers and the number of secondary students taking Italian is always rising.

“We are having problems assigning Italian language teachers as there aren’t enough of them to go round,” Mr Degabriele said.

ICT teachers also got involved for the occasion as they helped students prepare their power point presentation making it an intra-curricular event throughout the school.

“The 1st prize was Lm200, the second Lm150 and Lm100 for third prize. Each school received a map costing Lm10 as a consolation prize.

“The reason was that we were too embarrassed to give only one prize for each category as the standard was so high.”

Mr Degabriele also said that they wrote why the prizes were awarded under the names of the schools.

Sir Adrian Dingli Junior Lyceum School for girls mimed a beautiful dance entitled “The Birth of Italy” choreographed and directed by Frank Tanti. It was so original that it was awarded a trophy.

“As this was such a well-received initiative, we have already come up with the theme for next year, which is The Italian Language and the Sea. It would be a great pity if it does not get off the ground,” Dr Trabalza said.

“I believe that competition along with team work is very positive as it gets everyone involved.”

Mr Degabriele said they hoped more schools would participate in this competition next year, and also referred to Gozo as only one school from there had taken part this year.

The Education division is also planning to publish a teaching culture textbook for the coming year in line with the Council of Europe’s choice of 2008 as the Year of Intercultural Dialogue.

Asked by The Malta Independent on Sunday whether there were any exchange programmes in the pipeline, Dr Trabalza said this would involve consultation talks with the regional mayors in Italy.

Mr Degabriele said one of the initiatives being organised by a particular school is to take 20 students with learning difficulties for a few weeks to Italy to give them the opportunity of experiencing Italian culture when they visit Rome, Perugia, and Florence.

“Everything depends on time-availability as secondary school students obviously have their exams to think about,” he concluded.