The property:
The real estate is owned by Al Sole, a private company, dedicated to the design of sustainable territorial communities.

Responsible for the Project:
Enrico Zappoli Thyrion and Paola Bellotti

| Biographies

Enrico Zappoli Thyrion
Enrico has always been fascinated by travelling. While attending university, he had the opportunity to take courses in Spain and Argentina. Once graduated in Law, he took a post-graduate degree in Communication Law, and then moved on to work in the not-for-profit sector, which led him to discover more countries, such as Peru and Morocco. During this period, he gained experience through project management in the microfinance sector, in women microenteprise development and in multi-cultural projects. With the objective of gathering further experience in the private sector, he started as a consultant with a real estate investment company, and then moved on to start up the Al Sole company. The motivation behind the set up of this company was to try out a business model which follows the principles of sustainability and holism. While probing further into these issues, he attended a training course on project management in sustainable development and permaculture at the Scuola di Pratiche Sostenibili in Milan. His main interest in this project is to implement and test a model that supports an innovative culture through the creation of sustainable territorial communities. Still looking to feed his passion for travelling and discovering new cultures, thanks to the present project, he intends to create a network of people and projects at the international level who share similar values and objectives and will be able to cooperate in order to improve life quality on this planet.

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Paola Bellotti
After receveing her university education in the United States (Seattle, Washington) she moved back to Europe, to Paris, where she started working in the not-for-profit sector, specifically in the microfinance sector. She moved on to gather more experience in other NGOs in Europe, mostly working as project manager and fundraiser, and finally moved back to Italy, her home country, where she currently resides (Genova) and works as a consultant for various public (FAO, Regione Lombardia) and private companies (Al
Sole, Parco Tecnologico Lodi). Her project experience ranges from small and micro enterprise development in rural areas, to educational programmes for sustainable consumption, to community development in marginal and isolated communities. She has worked extensively in Latin America, including Brazil and Peru, and has collaborated to a number of FAO projects in Asia (Nepal, Bhutan). Her main interest in this project
is to create a model for sustainable living and working that could be replicated in other regions, while creating and being part of a network of driven, professional and creative people striving for a more just, sustainable, ethic and happy world. She is driven by a sense of responsibility towards the community at large, which, in her opinion, needs to find practical solutions to solve the most urgent challenges we are facing today: inequality and the sustainable use of natural resources.