The project 'The oil of life', aims to promote olive oil and revitalize the olive grove. The initiative sponsor an olive tree is carried out by the Lumiére Foundation and has the collaboration of Ayuda en Acción, Mensajeros de la Paz, Sport and Development and the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid. It will be developed between 2017 and 2021 in Spain and other European countries and will allow the sponsorship of an olive tree through the web olivosolidario.org. In return, the sponsor will receive two bottles of extra virgin olive oil, personalized with the name indicated on the front label.

The objective of this project is to reach more than 200,000 sponsorships in its five years. Part of the income obtained by the sponsorships will be destined to the solidarity programs of the NGO's collaborators and another part will become aid for the conservation and the care of the centenary olive trees. In this way it is intended to recover and put the abandoned olive grove in value, conserve the biodiversity of the area, and generate a sustainable and social economy for small towns in the process of disappearing.

Each sponsor will receive the coordinates of their sponsored trees and can visit them and enjoy the Oleotourism of the area with special programs designed for this purpose.

An example of this project we have in the town of Oliete, where since its inception more than 5,000 olive trees of the 100,000 old trees that exist in the Teruel municipality located in the region of Andorra-Sierra de Arcos have been sponsored. Oliete olive groves are formed by a large number of ancient trees, olive trees of the autochthonous Aragonese variety "empeltre", word meaning graft. It is the most abundant in Bajo Aragón, although there are a host of varieties, many of them indigenous.

The sponsorship of olive trees in this area is still the essence of a project that aims to rescue Oliete's olive groves from oblivion. In this line, an oil mill has been set up to produce olive oil of the "Empeltre" and "Manzanota" varieties that are available for sale through the miolivo.org website.

With the launch of this website, in addition to publicizing the project sponsors an olive tree through the commercialization of virgin olive oil that comes from olive trees in the process of recovery, its sale will help generate rural development in the area.

SOURCE: olivosolidario.org.