Volunteer Testimonial || Ilenia Romano

Hello, I’m Ilenia! I’m 25 years old, I came from Italy and now I’m living a rural experience in Lastours. Before coming here to France I was living in Sicily, I had a good job and a nice shared house, it was great for a moment but in just one year my life became too comfortable and my backpack was waiting for me! I think if you are in a comfort zone it’s time to change!
So I decided to go, not knowing where, but I was sure that something would change soon.
I find this IDC project ( thanks Associazione Kora!), I applied as a volunteer and in 3 weeks I prepared myself, left everything, took my backpack again, and started this new aventure!
It is the first time that I participate in an ESC project and I find something better than my expectations. The project is ‘’Rural Discovery’’ which means that we are in a real rural area, so it’s the perfect place to live in full contact with nature.
We are a young community and we share our daily life. We choose to do different activities based on our interests and attitude. Also everyone can propose a workshop for sharing some knowledge with the group so we have the opportunity to learn new skills everyday from each other.
I like to spend my time in a vegetable garden, we have plants like tomatoes, potatoes, basil and more. I like to take care of the plants and see how they grow a bit everyday.
Also we have many interesting eco-building projects using recycled materials, like creating a compost dry toilet, a big green house, and some stuff for the animals: we have donkeys, ponies, pigs, dogs, cats, chickens!
I was looking for a natural and basic life to share with nice guys and I found it in Camping LeBelvedere! So I just can tell you to do this experience, because you’ll never know until you try.