The choice of going to live in an ecovillage came after a long journey of approach and frequentation. However, the Lumen community is today the family nest of Federico Palla and his family.
Federico, tell us how the idea of living in an ecovillage came about
Beyond the social conventions and the roles that I could describe, I feel a soul in search of the truth that is making a very interesting growth path within an intentional community named LUMEN, a very rare and precious experience that I met in 2001, attending an inner growth group in Crema (CR), a city where I lived at the time and where I worked in the social field.
After 11 years of mutual knowledge and assiduous attendance I decided, together with my wife Valentina, to settle in LUMEN.
I have always interpreted as a strong signal that the road was the right one also the arrival of our daughter Matilde, just when we decided this life change.
Currently, within the community, I deal with economic management, I teach mathematics to elementary school children (we have a parenting education project up to the 5th grade for some years), I rarely deal with animation for children and I teach sociology of health to all inside the LUMEN School of Naturopathy.
What exactly is an ecovillage?
An ecovillage is a lay community of people who decide to live together and share some living spaces, following some common values, including the attention to environmental sustainability .
What distinguishes Lumen from other ecovillages?
In Italy there are about forty ecovillage experiences, all very different from each other. LUMEN has some characteristic features that others do not have.
I try to summarize them in three main points:
a deep attention to the health of human beings, animals and the planet;
the sharing of many common spaces and the experience, in some families, of co-habitation;
a holistic view of life, which provides for the integration within the community experience of many areas of life, in particular work: in LUMEN self-sustaining activities are promoted which allow residents to have financial support without having to turn to the "normal" labor market.
Furthermore, LUMEN is one of the few "lowland" ecovillages, close to population centers . In fact, ecovillages are usually in very suggestive places and a little isolated from the world.
Ecovillage and community: can the first enrich the territory in which it is located?
An ecovillage can enrich the territory in which it settles from many points of view. First of all, through the recovery of old abandoned structures, the ecovillage in itself revives places that would otherwise be degraded. So it enhances a territory.
The ecovillage, as LUMEN has done, also provides for the protection and enhancement of the surrounding environment : there are so many trees planted and animals that have repopulated the hectare of land on which our ecovillage stands.
It can be a stimulus for the environmental policies of a territory, showing how daily practices of environmental sustainability are possible and how sharing leads to a benefit for the entire community.
For example, in LUMEN there is a reduced consumption of electricity and water compared to the average of the territory, car sharing makes it possible to have a number of cars per family 50% -60% lower than the national average.
In the case of LUMEN, the promotion of health through healthy lifestyles also makes it possible not to use drugs and to avoid health interventions mainly related to the treatment of chronic diseases, a real epidemic for our industrialized world that puts a strain on the estate of the national health system.
This attention to well-being, as well as the promotion of home parts for physiological pregnancies, also entail savings in health care costs that benefit the community (a physiological birth in the hospital involves a public expenditure of about € 2, 000.00).
LUMEN is composed of 60 people, half adults and half boys and children and alone produces a saving in health care costs of a few thousand euros a year: think about what would happen if there were more ecovillages of this kind in Italy .. .
Often experiences like ours are opposed rather than favored, and I believe that, from a certain point of view, it is also good (without exaggerating!): Because it strengthens the motivation of its members to carry on such an important message and it makes those who do not have a truly communitarian attitude desist.
In this regard, I like to quote a motto attributed to Gandhi : " First they ignore you. Then they mock you. Then they fight you. Then you win ”.
