From Soil to Systems: Co-Creating a Digital Platform for Permaculture and Soil Literacy

Summary of the challenge
In Sicily, many young people have inherited agricultural land and countryside homes that, without adequate care, remain unused and slowly fall into decay, along with the soil itself and the life opportunities it once offered. While families could pay professionals to maintain them, this is often financially unfeasible. At the same time, access to clear, practical knowledge about soil regeneration through permaculture is still fragmented and inaccessible. A lack of tools and shared learning spaces prevents these lands from being brought back to life. Through permaculture education and community-based work, these spaces could be regenerated, becoming sites of ecological healing, cultural transmission, and quality time shared with family and friends. Crucially, this is not only a proposal for those who already own land, it also opens new paths to employment and meaningful work. By acquiring skills through the digital platform, individuals can offer accessible, regenerative solutions to others, creating value for both communities and ecosystems. What’s at stake is not just soil health, but intergenerational knowledge, rural vitality, and the future of these territories.
Detailed description
In recent years, Sicily has faced the paradox of land abundance and land neglect. A significant number of young Sicilians have inherited rural land and countryside homes from older generations. However, these inherited spaces, often located in peri-urban or marginal rural areas, frequently remain inactive, overgrown, and unused due to a lack of knowledge, time, and financial resources. Without adequate care and purpose, these lands deteriorate, and the living soil beneath them is at risk of erosion, compaction, and biodiversity loss. Beyond environmental degradation, the social and economic potential tied to these spaces is also quietly fading. Many families cannot afford to hire professionals to manage these lands, and young people often migrate to urban areas or abroad in search of viable livelihoods, further disconnecting them from their rural roots. At the same time, the potential for regeneration, ecological, cultural, and economic, remains strong. With the right tools and knowledge, these lands could become vibrant hubs of life, learning, and collaboration. What’s missing is a bridge: a way to connect people, soil, and skills in an accessible, community-driven way. This challenge proposes the creation of a digital platform for permaculture learning and practice, aimed at fostering soil literacy, ecological stewardship, and new pathways for regenerative livelihoods. The platform will serve as a commons-based space where individuals, families, communities, and educators can access open, locally adapted knowledge about permaculture principles and techniques. It will feature multimedia content (videos, guides, podcasts), interactive learning modules, community stories, and practical toolkits designed for those with little prior experience but great willingness to engage with land in meaningful, sustainable ways. Crucially, the platform will also function as a matchmaking tool: connecting people who possess practical skills and permaculture knowledge with landowners, often youth or families, who have inherited land in need of regeneration. This meeting space will promote mutual aid, shared work experiences, and the formation of new community dynamics grounded in the care for soil. Regenerating land thus becomes not only an environmental goal, but a shared social and economic opportunity. Importantly, the platform is not intended only for landowners. It will also empower individuals to develop professional skills in regenerative land care, which can be offered as valuable services to others, neighbors, cooperatives, public institutions, at affordable rates. These roles, based on cooperation and low-impact practices, offer an alternative to extractive models of landscaping or monoculture farming, and align with a broader vision of soil democracy and regenerative transition. Knowledge becomes not only a means of self-sufficiency, but also a livelihood in itself. The initiative will focus initially on Sicily, where the urgency is high: the island faces acute challenges of desertification, soil erosion, rural depopulation, and socio-economic marginalization in many areas. Yet Sicily is also home to a vibrant network of grassroots movements, CSA groups, informal rural cooperatives, ecovillages, and experimental permaculture sites. By mapping and amplifying these existing efforts, the platform will not start from zero, but weave together a network of already active knowledge holders. The participatory nature of the project is key. Rather than delivering top-down instruction, the platform will be co-designed with local actors, young landowners, educators, permaculture practitioners, and civil society groups. Offline events and workshops will support digital engagement and create trust among users, while the platform’s content will be made accessible in multiple languages, starting with Italian and English, with potential expansion into local dialects and other European languages. Over time, the model could be replicated in other regions facing similar challenges, such as Southern Spain, Portugal, or rural Greece, through open-source licensing and shared governance. This challenge is directly aligned with multiple SoilTribes priority areas: Regenerative Transitions: it proposes a cultural and economic shift toward low-impact, soil-nourishing land practices. Commons Stewardship: it promotes shared responsibility for land and knowledge, rejecting individualism in favor of mutual support. Territorial Justice: it focuses on rural areas often overlooked by innovation or investment policies, and offers youth a reason to stay and engage. Soil Democracy: it values the agency of communities in choosing how to care for their land and restore degraded soil ecosystems. The platform will be developed and supported by two key organizations: MARKESING, a company focused on developing technological solutions for social impact. With solid experience in EU-funded projects, Markesing recently created EmpathyBot, a digital platform designed to support families navigating high-conflict divorce scenarios. Their expertise in ethical tech, community engagement, and participatory design will guide the development of the permaculture platform’s digital infrastructure and user experience. SETTEVOCI, a cultural and ecological initiative that has made permaculture its foundation. Based in Castiglione di Sicilia, Settevoci restored a large rural masseria, transforming it into a vibrant center for cultural events, learning, and communal gatherings. Their lived experience with land regeneration, community-building, and ecological care makes them an essential partner for the content, facilitation, and territorial anchoring of the project. What is at stake is not only the ecological health of Sicilian soils, but also the continuity of rural life, intergenerational transmission of land-based knowledge, and the opportunity to reimagine our relationship with land as one of care, reciprocity, and resilience. Through this platform, we envision a landscape where soil is not abandoned but re-animated, through learning, sharing, and community. Where the act of tending to the earth is no longer seen as nostalgic or burdensome, but as an act of cultural resistance, joy, and innovation.
Which SoilTribes priority area(s) does your challenge address?
Soil Democracy
Commons Stewardship
Regenerative Transitions
How does your challenge respond to the selected SoilTribes priority area(s)?
Our challenge directly addresses Regenerative Transitions by promoting permaculture as a pathway toward ecologically sustainable and socially inclusive land use. Through the creation of a digital learning platform, we aim to make regenerative knowledge widely accessible, empowering individuals, families, and communities to shift from land abandonment to active soil care, self-sufficiency, and circular value creation. The platform fosters low-cost, high-impact practices that regenerate the soil while creating new livelihoods. It also contributes to Commons Stewardship by positioning both land and knowledge as shared, living resources. The platform supports peer-to-peer learning, collective experimentation, and the documentation of grassroots practices, weaving together a commons-based ecosystem of care. It facilitates the reconnection between people and territory, promoting stewardship through local alliances and community engagement. Finally, the challenge supports Soil Democracy by enabling wider participation in land regeneration and decision-making. Many young people in Sicily own or have access to neglected land but lack the means to care for it. By offering accessible, community-driven education and by connecting landowners with permaculture practitioners, the platform fosters inclusive engagement and shared responsibility over soil. It turns passive landholding into an active civic and ecological role, rooted in mutual aid and knowledge exchange.
Which EU Soil Mission goal(s) does your challenge contribute to?
Prevent erosion
Conserve soil organic carbon
Reduce desertification
Enhance soil biodiversity
Challenge typology
Roots (deep structural transformation)
Expected outputs / actions
Awareness-raising / communications
Capacity-building (training, guides, mentorship)
Participatory processes
Prototyping or technical testing
Who is involved or affected by the challenge?
This challenge directly involves and affects multiple groups across Sicily and potentially beyond: Young landowners and families who have inherited rural land or countryside homes, but lack the knowledge, resources, or time to care for them. They are central to this initiative, both as learners and as stewards of regeneration. Permaculture practitioners and educators, who hold valuable experiential knowledge and are eager to share it with others. The platform offers them new opportunities for visibility, collaboration, and income generation through training and mentorship. Local communities and grassroots associations already active in regenerative practices and rural resilience. These actors will contribute content, host workshops, and participate in the co-design of the platform. MARKESING, a social impact company with extensive experience in EU digital innovation projects and participatory processes. Over the past year, Markesing has delivered over 400 hours of training in 12 public schools across Sicily, building strong relationships with students and educators. These schools represent a key partner in scaling soil literacy and introducing permaculture skills to younger generations through the platform. SETTEVOCI, a permaculture-based initiative that restored a large rural masseria in Castiglione di Sicilia, now a vibrant cultural hub. They will serve as the territorial anchor of the project and facilitate offline testing, field-based learning, and training. Wider stakeholders, including municipalities interested in rural revitalization, educational institutions, and citizens engaged in environmental and social regeneration, are also potential collaborators and beneficiaries. By connecting these diverse actors, the platform creates an ecosystem of cooperation, bridging generations, sectors, and territories, to foster community-led soil care and regenerative futures.
Where is your challenge located?
The challenge is located in Castiglione di Sicilia and surrounding rural and peri-urban areas in the Etna Valley, including communities in the provinces of Catania and Messina, Sicily, Italy. While the project is rooted in this specific territory, it is conceived as a scalable and replicable model that can be adapted to similar contexts across Southern Europe and beyond. This is only the beginning, a pilot to activate broader regenerative practices, starting from the ground up.
Which SoilTribes pillar(s) are you connected to?
Academia, Education & Research
Civil Society
Business: Social Economy & Cooperative Sector
What public policies or institutional frameworks does your challenge engage with or seek to change?
This challenge aligns with and supports the EU Soil Strategy for 2030, particularly its goals related to preventing soil degradation, enhancing biodiversity, and promoting sustainable land use through education and community engagement. It also contributes to the objectives of the upcoming EU Soil Monitoring Law, by fostering soil literacy and encouraging citizen involvement in regenerative practices, especially among youth and rural communities. At the national and regional level in Italy, the project engages with broader frameworks of rural development and land stewardship, including aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) where current subsidy structures often overlook or undervalue regenerative, small-scale, and community-based land care initiatives. By equipping individuals with permaculture skills and connecting them with underused land, the project implicitly challenges policies that prioritize large-scale agriculture over distributed, ecologically sound land management. In the education sector, the challenge complements Italy’s Piano Nazionale per l’Educazione Ambientale and the Ministry of Education’s current efforts to integrate sustainability and climate awareness into school curricula. By providing schools with an innovative, digital tool to teach permaculture and soil care, the platform offers a practical implementation path for environmental education goals at both the institutional and territorial levels. In the long term, this challenge seeks to influence how unused or abandoned land is perceived and managed, promoting frameworks that recognize the value of regenerative, commons-based stewardship, and enabling policies that facilitate access to land and training for youth and social enterprises.
How do you imagine the Bootcamp will benefit your initiative — and others?
We see the Bootcamp as a powerful space to refine and co-design the core elements of our digital permaculture platform, both in terms of content structure and community engagement strategies. We hope to learn from peers and mentors how to design inclusive, participatory learning tools, and how to scale soil literacy in a way that is both accessible and grounded in local realities. We are particularly interested in exploring sustainable governance models for open-source platforms, and how to activate cross-sector collaboration between education, civil society, and the social economy. The Bootcamp will also allow us to test the replicability of our approach beyond Sicily, through dialogue with other territories facing similar soil and socio-economic challenges. In return, we bring strong experience in digital tool development for social impact (through our work at Markesing), as well as concrete field connections—with schools, educators, and grassroots permaculture practitioners. We are ready to share our insights from working in rural Sicily and to contribute to the broader ecology of soil democracy by offering a replicable model that combines education, community activation, and regenerative practice.