For social entrepreneur Zita Cobb, everything starts with place. Journey to the majestic wilderness of Fogo Island, where she spearheads a powerful new vision of community and of the future.
Zita Cobb grew up feral in an unspoiled and magical landscape, a child of an island so remote its inhabitants say it is “far away from far away”. For 400 years the settlers of Fogo Island and their descendants have clung improbably on to their rock in the North Atlantic, where pack ice from Greenland descends each year like pieces of the moon that fell into the sea, and traces of Elizabethan English and Old Irish can still be heard today.
Zita’s father, an illiterate fishman who traded his catch with a merchant not for money but for essential supplies, taught her what was important in life. “Nature,” he said, “knows everything.” But when industrial trawlers decimated the fish stocks in the surrounding waters, Fogo Islanders faced resettlement or ruin. Her father burned his boat and turned his back to the sea.
The story of how Zita spearheaded a set of projects to grow another leg on the Island’s economy, providing hope and a future to young people and a new way to not only survive, but thrive, in seemingly hopeless circumstances, is the subject of this unmissable talk. At its heart are four questions: what do we know? What do we love? What do we miss? And what can we do about it?
This talk takes place at 6:30pm British Summer Time.
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