
I am Lorenzo from Italy and I’m 31. I’ve been on this wheelchair for 12 years after a street accident, which caused me a spinal cord injury resulting in paraplegia. I’ve been swimming since I was a child and this sport, in addition to being a great passion, has also become my main physiotherapy. In fact I teach at the swimming pool in the Spinal Unit in Florence (the city where I live), helping patients who enter conditions similar to mine and using the sport as an instrument to enhance autonomy. Basically I try to use my experience in a positive way, helping and “pushing” people who find themselves in the condition I am, to recover their strength and the will to get back into the game. I work in a magical place, Dynamo Camp, a structure that offers recreational therapy to children with illnesses and there I deal with a module of the volunteers’ formation. I organize events in the schools to promote social inclusion and road safety and during these meetings I share my story with the students and invite them to take part into empathic sport activities (from the experience on the surfboard to the wheelchair basket).