The view from the Muga valley in the Pyrenees that opens before your eyes as you approach The Home is spectacular. The dark green, life-breathing forest with its impenetrable, dense network of roots, plants, bushes and trees seems infinite. The hills and mountains of the valley are touching the horizon. High up in the sky you can see a flock of vultures who are making their circles searching for food with their incredible eyesight. You can gaze for hours into the vastness of the Pyrenees mountains and enjoy the silence, interrupted from time to time by the chirping of birds. Yet this beauty is deceptive.

The oak forest is under threat of degradation and biodiversity loss. A former epicentre of the charcoal industry that once brought life and work to the region and was abandoned decades ago is facing rapid decline. It was more than 100 years ago that vultures, the guardians of the forest that serve ecosystems and humans, disappeared from the region. The Muga river is expected to lose 30 percent of its water over the next 30 years. 100,000 hectares of forest and land, on which the entire local agricultural industry and tourist sector of the Costa Brava in Catalonia depends, no longer provide enough water. The danger of drought is in the air.

This is where Stef van Dongen’s story and the story of The Home of the Pioneers of Our Time, a philanthropic foundation that brings together local authorities, villages, researchers, private investors and innovators, began three years ago. “I used to work a lot in the big cities in Africa, India and Latin America. When you build relationships with people and hear their stories, you realise with time that most of them came from farmland. They moved to the cities because their lands were degrading. Having done some research, I found out that 40% of soil is eroded, while the rest is moving fast in the same direction. And soil is water, soil is food, soil is life. Realising this was a pivotal moment for me”, he says with a soft smile in his eyes and a slight trace of fatigue. Stef Van Dongen, a Dutchman of tall and slender build, with a grey mop of curly hair who spent 20 years in impact investment, private-public partnership and social innovation space in Rotterdam and around the world, has found his new home in Catalonia and, together with the local communities, is helping restore the forest and create a vision for regenerative society that provides jobs and opportunities, while being in harmony with nature.

Read the full article about conservation philanthropy by Hanna Stähle at Philanthropy Europe Association.