I’m interested in permaculture and gardening and eventually managing my own farm which would be a kind of teaching farm where the goal focus wouldn’t be on production but on teaching young people about permaculture which I find there to be a very big interest in and a lack of spaces where people can really get an in-depth view about it. My studies were in philosophy, economics, and politics and there I learned a lot about climate change and global problems and so my interest in permaculture well besides from coming from my hobby of gardening came also from my concern about global issues.
The Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs program I first heard about during a meeting for the ESC that I did in Spain for six months, which was at a eco-village project called Sunseed, in which I was also doing gardening. The thing that I started to find the most rewarding was both understanding nature and how agriculture can mimic and be in line with natural processes and especially explaining that to others who are curious but who don’t know about soil, who don’t know about compost, who don’t know about soil, bacteria, fungi, teaching people to identify plants, which plants are edible and which plants are useful for the garden or for whatever purpose. That is something that I’ve come to increasingly find a huge sense of purpose in.
I now think that I would like to focus the next period of my life on increasing my knowledge of nature and agriculture techniques and encouraging people to get their hands dirty, learn to use traditional tools, and be able to appreciate the direct contact with nature that I find hugely beneficial for myself and I know is for everyone who’s willing, open-minded enough to give it a try. I want to enable those experiences for people and be an entry point of knowledge as I think we all have the skills to do it and maybe if the interest isn’t there yet, oftentimes just simple exposure to it can be the start of a lifelong journey and increase in interest as it happened with me when I was a teenager and I was given a community garden that was spare in my neighborhood and started to play around with planting vegetables.