Together with Studio Progetto for People and the Community

After last year's experience, the Veil Energy team once again joined forces with the Studio Progetto cooperative for another day of corporate volunteering alongside its young participants and staff.

The original plan was to build a ramp to improve accessibility at Studio Progetto's headquarters in Cornedo, but bad weather made it impossible to work outdoors. So we returned to Villa Zileri, where we had already volunteered last year: a place we already knew, and one that once again gave us the chance to meet new people and discover new projects connected to the cooperative.

Getting a taste of everyday life at Studio Progetto

We spent the morning taking part in some of the activities that make up the cooperative's daily routine. We split into small groups to tidy up spaces, label preserves, and process lavender. We also prepared “seed bombs,” which will be sold during the Christmas season as gifts and used in projects for schoolchildren. Other groups focused on harvesting vegetables and collecting eggs.

The real value of this experience lay above all in the time spent together with the cooperative's young participants. Working side by side, we got to know them, listen to their stories, and better understand what their days are like.

For the Veil Energy team, it was also a chance to spend time together outside the usual work environment. Without our everyday roles and tasks, we found ourselves collaborating away from our desks, sharing duties and responsibilities in a setting that encouraged more direct, personal relationships.

Two different worlds, one shared attention to resources

Studio Progetto and Veil Energy operate in very different fields. On one side, work with people and projects focused on inclusion and community; on the other, energy efficiency and emissions reduction. In this experience, though, we found common ground in themes like the responsible use of resources and sustainability.

The seed bombs were a concrete example of this meeting point. During the activity, we learned about the Fukuoka method, an approach to agriculture developed by the Japanese farmer and philosopher of the same name, which minimizes human intervention to make room for natural processes, rather than controlling every stage of a plant's growth.

For many of us, it was the first time coming into contact with this philosophy. We began preparing the seed balls together with the young participants, working by hand a mixture of soil and clay to which we added various types of seeds.

Once dried, the balls are released into fields or meadows and left to the elements: it's the soil, water, and climate that determine when and which seeds will sprout.

A simple activity, but one that gave us a close look at the research and experimentation work Studio Progetto is carrying out in regenerative agriculture — and a chance to rediscover, in a sector very different from our own, a principle that is also part of how we work: using resources more consciously, acting to protect the environment and preserve its balance.

Roots and the evolution of a project

The theme of regenerative agriculture also led us to discover Roots, a project developed by the same cooperative to experiment with new approaches to cultivation and biodiversity protection.

The initiative was created to explore the relationship between agriculture, the environment, and climate change, through hands-on activities and environmental education programs:

• Understanding the soil, studying its structure, microbiology, and fertility.
• Growing the vegetable garden naturally, using water, space, and resources with care.
• Self-producing and protecting crops, from seedbed to the natural management of pests and disease.
• Experimenting with regenerative chicken farming, integrated with the vegetable garden's activities.

For us, Roots has a special connection to last year's volunteer day, since it's the very same vegetable garden at Villa Zileri where we had worked together with the young participants, preparing the soil, arranging the flower beds, and planting seasonal vegetables. Coming back a year later and finding that space now part of a broader, more structured project gave a sense of continuity to our previous experience and strengthened our collaboration with Studio Progetto.

A bond that continues

Studio Progetto is a social cooperative that has been active for over thirty years in the field of inclusion and social innovation. Through training, educational and cultural programs, and community initiatives, it works to create opportunities for participation and independence.

One of the things that made this experience special was coming back to share a day with Studio Progetto and reconnecting with the people we met last year, alongside activities that have grown and developed in the meantime. We recognized the young participants right away and picked up working together just as naturally as before.

And for us at Veil Energy, that's part of what corporate volunteering days are about: building relationships that last beyond a single initiative, and giving continuity to projects in the local community.