Going on holidays to work

by Anna de Polo

For those looking for an experience outside the box for the next summer, the French organization APARE ("Association pour la Participation et l'Action Régionale”) offers an alternative and “useful” holiday. The association, recognized by the European Union, organizes each summer work camps and campuses in the Southern Alps and the Cote d'Azur, but also in countries around the Mediterranean such as Algeria, Greece, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia.

In the work camps, volunteers of various ages and nationalities are actively involved in the protection and enhancement of natural and the cultural heritage of rural Mediterranean areas.
Over a period of 2-3 weeks, experienced professionals introduce the volunteers to the art of restoration and stonework. It is thus possible to benefit from an educational experience on the professional level, but also on the human level, thanks to the opportunity to know and work with people of different cultures and origins. There are also moments of leisure, where participants can relax with sporting, cultural and artistic activities: it is indeed a holiday, although different because useful and adventurous. The peculiarity of this kind of experience is to offer an opportunity that is diametrically opposed to the “pop” divertissement we're used to use to distract us from the worries of everyday life, but also, at times, from ourselves. Holidays are often an escape from routine life and the box in which we live most of the year, but this should not necessarily results in a kind of fun that in the end leaves us empty and tired. It can be rather surprising to find that the practical and manual work, carried out in contact with people different from us, the physical and mental engagement with something that has practical use and a noble purpose, can be much more satisfying and refreshing than any holiday of "pure fun".

The offer of APARE is just one of several proposals for environmental and archaeological work camps for young students or enthusiasts who want to share an experience of solidarity, civic participation and education. Also Legambiente offers each year volunteer camps focus on different topics, from biodiversity protection to the enhancement of the local cultural heritage. One of the work camps proposed for summer 2011 is about the environmental rehabilitation of territories affected by crime. «Legambiente has always been deployed against the eco-mafia. Since 2000 it’s working with Libera to realize work camps where environmentalism and legality meet together in order to become concrete projects - explains Luca Gallerano, head of the Voluntary Sector of Legambiente. The goal is to spread a culture based on citizenship that might conflict with the culture of privilege and blackmail, which is typical of the mafia in Italy, and thus prove that, even in places where the mafia has lorded, it is possible to reconstruct a social and economic society based on legality and on the respect for human beings and for the environment».

An alternative summer, after all, full of practical work, cultural exchange and environmental and civic engagement, to meet different people and discover something new about our territory, our culture and perhaps even about ourselves.