Goodbyes
Yesterday, Franka left the coliving after sharing 4 months with us. She returned to Germany to work remotely for a Swiss company that asks her to go to the office once a week. The truth is that we have learned a lot from her these months — her kindness and extreme generosity, her gestures and details, her intention and empathy, her love and care. She also turned out to be a great cook, which we are already missing. Without a doubt, her trust and support for the project at the beginning has been very valuable, taking care of the space and the animals, connecting with the local community, enjoying the surroundings, and sharing a beautiful energy with all the visitors, colivers, and entrepreneurs.
This situation is starting to repeat itself often: people arrive for a few weeks and stay for months, they come as strangers and leave as friends. Some arrive with problems and leave in a different way, others come looking for clarity and leave having changed their lives, some with an idea, which turns into a project as time goes by. Some even end up settling in Cantabria after spending a few weeks here.
We are what we do to change what we are. Eduardo Galeano
The time we spent with Yaara and Sagi was also very special. They came from Israel searching for peace and ended up living for several months in the cabin named after it, without having planned it. They arrived committed and left married, spent Christmas with us, and shared Jewish and Catholic rituals. Many people have only spent a few days here, yet they’ve left a great impression, and we wished we could have spent more time with them. I won’t mention more names because I’d forget half of them, but it’s true that we are always very happy when some of these people return. We always say goodbye with a “see you later,” hoping that life will bring us back together again.
Our little one sometimes has a harder time with goodbyes, but there are always other people who keep her company. It’s amazing how she remembers certain anecdotes over time. After several weeks or months, she asks if we remember this or that story, and she surprises us. Lucia is very used to spending time with adults; she talks to them, teaches them Spanish, plays, draws, has fun, does sports, and looks very happy. This April, families with children will arrive, and it will be different; she will surely connect more, as many days she’ll skip school to join the planned activities we have for them. I hope all of these experiences add to her life because we act on intuition and try to do the best we can.
Jonathan just arrived a few days ago because he heard about PAS from our friend Tomas. The truth is that this is starting to happen — it’s incredible that word of mouth is already working, even though the project has been operating for a short time. It’s also beautiful how the different communities we’ve been building over the years are converging. I mean, people who have traveled with Hola Ghana end up becoming students of our programs or events, or vice versa, students from the community travel with us to Africa. It also happens that people who have completed The Social MBA come to live in our coliving in Cantabria or that we offer scholarships to people who visit us in Villegar and whom we know we can support with the academic side and authentic connections.
Another unexpected and beautiful effect is the possibility of connecting people from our different communities: Hola Ghana, The Social Circle, and PAS Rural Coliving. The key to this is the annual gathering we organize every October in Cantabria. It’s a great opportunity to meet in person and for people who share the same ideals to get to know each other. On the other hand, we’re increasingly holding more open events; we’re opening up more to generate value for other people, for more people to get to know us, to establish ourselves as a gateway to the impact economy.
In the end, we are communities of communities, and we are connected with many others, such as Acumen, Service Space, Espacio Ubuntu, Red Impacto Cantabria, Impact HUB, Bcorp, NESI, Social Impact Doers, Círculo Unlimited, Puente Regenerativo, Fonredess, and Fiare Banca Ética. Our main goal, in addition to promoting collaboration and alliances, is to practice the theory of “tinto” (a social capital theory), to generate social capital and connect people so that things happen.
And you… Are you part of any community?
