When i decided to do EYE programme was during one of the hardest moments of the economical crisis in Spain, when it wasn’t strange for a graduate to spend months unemployed… Self employment, with an international approach, seemed to be one of the most realistic choices for a profile like mine, so i took my ideas about revitalization of rural areas and cultural dynamization and thought: let’s give it some fresh air!
Credits: Francesca Zito
After a long research, i managed to contact what happened to be an amazing social project, located in an incredibly beautiful small town in the south of Italy: and soon i moved to Matera, hosted by Casa Netural.
Credits: Caspar Diederik
On a first moment, the project and the community helped me to reactivate myself as a qualified worker, putting my head back into my own aptitudes and capacities. Casa Netural offered me a new perspective on what it is “possible” in a small context, and gave me the chance to work in many innovative enterpreneurial projects. Meeting the people who were running them and their personal and professional careers was for sure one of the most enriching things of my EYE.
Credits: Francesca Zito
Casa Netural was a meeting point, a co-working, a social lab, a house and an office, a place to dream and share… Social innovation, with the international approach i was looking for, was one of the cross-cutting themes of the project. We worked with the local reources giving them a new social value, exploring new strategies of develoment and making a community of professionals. My vision of rural development evolved into something a lot more inclusive, where wide, unexpected, social networks are in the forefront. It opend my mind and also let me experiment many different strategies to create those networks and make them strong.
Credits: Francesca Zito
All this made my initial project change a lot, and some months after my EYE i started Spanish Naturally – online spanish lessons, where i combine language teaching and rural development. I offer spanish lessons online, and teach from my countryhouse to a lot of people living in rural areas around the world, where there’s no possibility of attending conventional language academies. Additionally, i created the programme “Come to Spain”, that facilitates linguistic immersion trips, in collaboration with country development projects in Spain.
The economical situation in Spain is still really hard, and the current national laws for enterpreneurs make it even more difficult. Starting a business is an everyday challenge where you have to use all of your imagination to create your way of working, your way of living. You have to love what you do. And when your job takes you closer to your ideal of lifestyle all the efforts are worthy.
