On 28 and 29 May 2025, a group of journalists and foundation representatives visited the Paduli Park in southern Salento as part of the press tour ‘Visioni con il Sud. Viaggio nel Salento dei Paduli’ (Visions with the South: A Journey Through Salento’s Paduli Region), launched and organized by Fondazione con il Sud. The goal of the initiative was to draw public attention to the extraordinary community-driven regeneration effort taking place across this vast inland area of 5,500 hectares in the province of Lecce, spanning eight small municipalities: Botrugno, Giuggianello, Muro Leccese, Nociglia, Sanarica, San Cassiano, Supersano, and Surano.
Here, since 2022, the ‘Santi Paduli’ project, supported by Fondazione con il Sud and coordinated by LUA (Laboratorio Urbano Aperto, or Open Urban Laboratory), has launched a ‘worksite for change’ aimed at the demographic and social regeneration of the region. Associations, municipalities, schools, farmers, small businesses, and residents are working together to counter depopulation, focusing on the landscape, sustainable agriculture, and healthy food, and giving young people the opportunity to stay, return, or move to this area.
The press tour included a visit to the public olive grove and the Bosco del Parco (Park Woodland), an effort to regenerate a landscape severely affected by Xylella, the deadly bacterium that has devastated Salento’s olive trees, many of them centuries old. Another stop was the Opificio dei Frutti Minori (Minor Fruit Processing Facility), a former warehouse restored and repurposed to transform and add value to fruit ‘excluded’ from large-scale commercial distribution. Above all, participants had the chance to see La Buona Mensa (the Good School Meal Programme) up close, the public school meal service launched by the Unione dei Comuni delle Terre di Mezzo, which brings good, healthy, locally sourced zero-kilometre food, respectful of the environment, producers, and the local economy, into the school and preschool cafeterias of the eight municipalities. Managed by the Santa Fucina Cooperative, established as part of the Santi Paduli project, La Buona Mensa also includes a ‘talking menu’ displayed in school cafeterias, listing the origin of the food served and giving recognition to those who supply the ingredients. In 2025, the Buona Mensa also received the ‘Piccoli ma Grandi’ (Small but Mighty) award from Foodinsider, the observatory that monitors the state of school catering services each year. Other stops included the Osteria Agricola: Laboratorio del Gusto (farm-to-table culinary lab), a cultural and social space tied to the hyper-local supply chain of healthy food, as well as visits to some of the local businesses that supply the Buona Mensa. These visits provided a firsthand look at stories of restanza (the choice to stay) and young people who, after studying elsewhere, chose to return and build sustainable businesses. It was a journey not only through places but, above all, through the people involved in this broad process of change: project operators, mayors, entrepreneurs, farmers, workers, teachers, families, and the artists involved in the Nidificare i Paduli (Nesting in the Paduli) land art project.
