This event was a follow-up to the Storytelling for Change youth participation mobility, which took place at Sunseed in February 2025. One of the participants, Erika Peña, went on to play a leading role in designing and organising Sunseed’s local follow-up activity, CaminARTE: From Trash to Creativity.
In the article below, Erika shares the story of the event through her own eyes, reflecting on how the mobility inspired her to turn storytelling into meaningful local action and how the experience empowered her to engage her community in creative environmental action.
“Hello! I’d like to introduce myself in this short article that I’m delighted to share with you. My name is Erika Peña, and I am currently the Communications and Volunteer Coordinator at Sunseed.
I had the opportunity to say yes to a workshop mentored by our Project Manager, Ashley, as a follow-up to the Storytelling for Change project, which took place at Sunseed Desert Technology in February as part of the Community Café project, a Youth Participation Activity funded by the Erasmus+ Programme.
The idea behind Community Café began with three friends sharing a coffee and discussing how young people could become agents of change through storytelling and personal experiences. From that simple conversation, this inspiring project was born.
I have to admit, dear reader, that I thought I was simply attending a workshop where I would learn a new storytelling technique in a practical and engaging way. What I hadn’t fully realised—mostly because I hadn’t read the programme carefully enough!—was that we would also be expected to design and carry out our own follow-up action inspired by everything we learned.
Another Sunseed volunteer, Freddy, also joined the workshop, and together we became our community’s representatives throughout the experience. I really enjoyed this role because it allowed other participants to ask us about life at Sunseed, while we could also support visitors and stay connected with our colleagues who were helping with meals and hosting the event.
Sunseed hosted the Community Café workshop, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, welcoming participants from Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and France who were either already active as changemakers or eager to begin their journey. Over five days, we took part in activities centred on reflection, learning, personal development, community building, and, of course, plenty of fun.
Each day we explored different aspects of storytelling. On the final day, the Community Café facilitators explained that the next stage of the programme was to develop an action project with a clear call to action that each participant would implement before October. After returning home, I shared what I had learned about Community Café and Erasmus+ during our regular Friday community meeting, at the local CaminArte event, and in conversations with other members of the Sunseed community.
Today, I’d love to tell you about the action we created.
To celebrate Earth Day, and taking into account the time Freddy still had left at Sunseed, we decided to organise our activity on Saturday, 19 April. The idea was simple: organise a clean-up of the beautiful semi-desert ecosystem surrounding Sunseed in Almería and transform the waste we collected into creative objects that could be reused within our community, helping to close the loop on waste.
By combining Freddy’s practical building skills, my organisational work, and Ashley’s holistic planning, we brought to life an event we called “CaminArte: From Trash to Creativity.”
Preparation began a month in advance. We designed promotional posters and shared them both on social media and throughout nearby villages to invite as many people as possible to join us. Every week, the Sunseed community met to organise the event, coordinate responsibilities, review what we needed, and make sure everyone stayed informed while contributing ideas along the way.
Finally, the day arrived.
Filled with enthusiasm, participants spent the morning walking along three different routes around the project, collecting bottles, aluminium cans, glass, plastic, and other discarded materials. After returning to the main house, we gathered all the collected waste together, enjoyed a delicious vegan lunch, took a well-earned break, and then spent the afternoon transforming the materials into decorative pieces and useful handmade creations.
By that point in the day, our energy levels had naturally begun to drop, but creativity quickly took over. People experimented with painting, cutting, shaping, and assembling the reclaimed materials into colourful decorations and practical objects.
We ended the day by sharing a delicious afternoon snack and reflecting on everything we had achieved together. For me personally, it was incredibly rewarding to witness how a group of people united by a shared desire to care for their environment could turn an idea into reality through initiatives like the Community Café project. It reminded me that meaningful change begins with simple actions, collaboration, and the willingness to take part.”
This article was translated from the original written in Spanish. Find it here: CaminArte
