Hands off for the ’emptied’ saw

The residents of Viniegra de Abajo who have been attentive the last two weeks will have been able to perceive a new presence in the town. Whether helping in the organization of the last ‘Sierra Sonora’ festival, planting tomatoes in the community garden or walking through the mountains. This is Jimmy, a 28-year-old Frenchman who has recently arrived in the heart of the 7 Villas, his home for the next six months.

“I am surprised by how close and nice the people are here, not only Victor, the mayor, who is my ‘boss’, but all the neighbors, they make me feel as if I were in Nantes, my homeland,” explains the young man. His stay is possible thanks to the On & Off Youth Theater Association, which has long recruited volunteers from all over Europe to live in ‘La Rioja emptied’.

“I was looking for a cultural experience in Spain, since I studied Hispanic philology at university, I love your way of being,” says Jimmy. “Suddenly, I found this offer from On&Off, which included weekly theater workshops and other similar initiatives, just what I was looking for,” he adds happily. To date, Jimmy has developed inclusive theater classes for people with Down syndrome, from the Arsido Association.

In these workshops you will usually meet Sonja, another European On&Off volunteer who has recently arrived in the region. In her case, in the municipality of Camprovín. This young Serbian woman, 27 years old, has only been in the town that will host her until March 2025 for just a week.

«I decided to come here for many reasons; to learn Spanish, because I like volunteering and because it is a perfect opportunity to grow as a person,” she says. An expert in graphic design, from the first moment she began to design posters to promote On & Off initiatives.

«Although that is my specialty, I am open to other things: photography, crafts…», Sonja details. For now, she can already be seen socializing and adapting to what will be her hometown, at least, for the next ten months. And who knows if more. Because in the previous batches of volunteers, there were several successful cases of temporary foreigners who ended up becoming permanent neighbors, bewitched by the charm of rural areas.

“We have been bringing volunteers for several years now and they have almost always been success stories, it is similar to an Erasmus, but to experience Spanish rural culture,” explains Elisa Coterón, responsible for this program at the On&Off Association. At the moment, Jimmy and Sonja are taking their first steps, in the integration period, but in the future they will have to develop projects to benefit the locals.

In that sense, in previous editions, other Europeans created gymnastics workshops for older people or books that collected local tradition from the mouths of the natives. “Today we don’t have the project in mind, however, we really like the culture, so it could be something in that sense,” they both say.

Be that as it may, their mere presence is already a breath of fresh air for the municipalities of Viniegra and Camprovín, which with Sonja and Jimmy have 276 residents. And in the coming months they will reach 279 with the arrival of three more On&Off volunteers.