Hi, I’m Charlotte, a Belgian student doing an internship at EcoIsleta since October 2025. I managed the community and built bonds with the locals.
In this post, we try to help you understand what my role is and what life is like in our community…
Engaging with our Neighborhood
This month, my primary objective is to better understand the ‘Día de la Isleta’, a festivity we have in our neighborhood every year.
I would like to imagine what kind of collaboration with the local community would be possible to have a positive impact.
I met a great alternative tourism operator, Manolo, who manages the ‘Contramapas’ project. He is a very interesting and resourceful person.
We spent two hours discussing mass tourism in the Canary Islands and how to bring an alternative vision of tourism here. Here you can find the Instagram of his organization… https://www.instagram.com/contramapas/
I also suggested organising a workshop with him on alternative tourism during ‘Día de la Isleta’.
We’ll see in future adventures how we manage to organise this…
Dinners to strengthen ties…
In the middle of the month, we had a great dinner that strengthened the bonds between the coliving residents and a few people from outside the community.
It really made us feel like one big, caring family.
It breaks my heart to think that I will see them all leave the coliving one by one, but I also know that the bonds we have created will still be there for a while and that nothing will prevent us from meeting up again somewhere else in the future!
Brainstorming – Bottom-up!
Furthermore, this month I tried for the first time to encourage ideas to flow from the bottom up, so that it’s not just me proposing things, but so that synergy comes from the community itself and is self-managed.
It will be a trial-and-error process, and I’ll try again at the beginning of December to see how it evolves…
My little routine … and some serendipity!
I’m starting to feel at home, which is a nice feeling and motivates me even more to do my best.
I like the little routine that has developed, but I also like the serendipity that arises from one day to the next. If you’re not familiar with this word, I invite you to look up this interesting term…
See you!
Written by Charlotte…
