GROTTOLE (Italy), Jan 16 — Attention Italophiles and city slickers in search of a countryside sabbatical: you can spend this summer in a hilltop village in Italy, making homemade pasta, producing Italian olive oil and harvesting local honey as part of a community revitalization project with Airbnb.
Dubbed The Italian Sabbatical, the project is set in the village of Grottole, Matera in southern Italy, home of 300 inhabitants and 600 empty homes.
Four successful candidates will be chosen to become temporary citizens, ambassadors and Airbnb hosts of the village throughout the summer, to help breathe new life into the community, one of several rural hilltop villages across Italy in danger of disappearing.
The project is a partnership with local non-governmental organisation Wonder Grottole, whose aim is to repopulate the historic center over the next decade.
Throughout the summer, four successful candidates will make Grottole their new home, volunteering as Airbnb hosts.
For three months, the volunteers will learn the Italian language, help run the community vegetable garden, learn how to make pasta from scratch, harvest honey and produce olive oil — skills they’ll transmit to their guests.
The overall goal is to breathe new life into the community and repopulate the village’s historic centre over the next decade.
Candidates must be over 18 and available between June and August. They must have good conversational English. Applicants will be accepted from the US, Mexico, Argentina (except the province of Mendoza), Italy, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Australia, India and Japan.
More information can be found here. — AFP pic
