“Who am I really? What do I need to be genuinely happy? What are my innate qualities and strengths? What is my purpose in this world?”. Philosophical questions that, at some point in life, virtually every person has had cross his or her mind.
These are precisely the axes of The Akademia Ibizaa space of “free emotional education for young people between 18 and 23 years old who want to live in a more honest and free way”, as they define themselves. Founded in 2011 by Borja Vilaseca, this organization is located in 54 different cities around the world. One of those locations is in Ibiza since September 2019. Carolina Vorburger is the pedagogical director of La Akademia Ibiza. “It’s a training on self-knowledge, personal development and talent and vocation. The kids go on a journey,” she tells La Voz de Ibiza. Born in Madrid, she settled in Ibiza six years ago “after traveling around the world”. And she fell in love with the island and her partner who was born here. “My son is from Gibraltar, and I said ‘come on’ and here we are.” One situation changed her way of thinking. “I had to see my daughter’s teacher put on Facebook ‘damn Monday.’ To me that broke me, it broke me inside.
The person she was going to accompany with a stable job, civil servant, with five hours of work a day, seemed like a damn day to her. And I had to accompany beings who were opening up to life with a lot of sensitivity. How are these children going to come out later? Frustrated, damaged, unable to find meaning. In the end, we have a lot of responsibility in the world we are co-creating,” she says. That’s why she poured all her vocation into La Akademia. “We all have like that part of responsibility, of wanting to add to something concrete that materializes. On a personal level, I have had many social motivations, struggles, changes. But sometimes change becomes too big for us, you never get to see it. Here it is incredible: t
When you take a picture of the group on the first day and you take it at the end of the course, they are physically different. There is something in which they connect with themselves that gives them a lot more security, self-esteem and illusion. “.
In total, there are 100 hours of training divided into three workshops plus 15 hours of individual coaching, from the beginning of October to the end of April, with groups of between 15 and 25 people.
What the project is about
– What is La Akademia?
– Borja Vilaseca, who is the founder of La Akademia, went through a very deep crisis when he was 18, 19 years old, and it was through the Enneagram that he began to find a meaning to all that pain and also to see where the centered part of the personality was, when you suffer in that way, where to focus. He realized that there is no national program in the schools, there is no recognition, everything is focused on productivity without putting the focus on the being. So, he created this space without money so that all the kids have the opportunity regardless of where they come from and their economic possibilities. And then because, according to him, if these kids make this journey, they take advantage of the crisis of adolescence, they will not have to face the crisis of 40. Most people in their 40s ask themselves: what am I working on that does not nourish me? Who am I in a relationship with that does not add up? Why did I buy this house and I have a 30-year mortgage? It’s like you go about making decisions without knowing yourself, because that’s what you have to do, because that’s what life needs, but without personal power, without self-knowledge. And suddenly you see yourself in a place where you are not happy, thinking that society puts the value in “I will be happy when I have a job that gives me money, I have a house that I like, I have a nice partner”. And then you have all that at 40 years old, and you say, well here it doesn’t give us happiness, even if I have money, if I have it, and if I don’t have it, the problem will be that when I have it I will be happy, but it doesn’t go that way either. So, he created this as a way to make up for a deficiency in the educational system, and to be able to put the power also in each one of us and to get out of this paradigm of the guilty victim, in which we always focus on being 100% responsible for what we do, for what we say, for how we take what others do and what others say. It is also a space in which we begin to put this horizontality, those who come to accompany, to facilitate workshops, we learn from them, they from us, we from the other facilitators, the kids from each other, to remove this hierarchy that seems that because of age or training the power is somewhere else or is outside. It is a space in which we can all learn from each other, and get out of this paradigm of there is someone above us, but to be able to recover the inner wisdom of each one, and what I have to contribute to my colleagues, to the facilitators, to everyone. There is always the part of the critical spirit, of questioning oneself, of letting oneself feel, because we also work not only on a mental level, but also on an emotional and corporal level, even spiritual. We are complete beings and we have to get out of the mind a little bit, or let myself be carried only by the heart, and be able to integrate all the centers, and see that what may be valid for me in one sense, is not valid in another. That they question themselves, that they also dare to raise their voice, to say “this does not make sense to me, or now I do not see it, or it does not resonate with me”. This is also like another one of the things that goes into this part of the training with the specific agenda. There is a lot of transversal learning that is not in the syllabus and it is very important that they feel this power to be able to listen and to be able to validate what is for them, what is for them and what is not for them.
– How is this training organized?
– The first block are different workshops every Thursday and they look inward. There are different tools because each one resonates more with knowing themselves through the enneagram, or through human design, or through meditation. There are different tools that allow each kid to put the focus on who I am, beyond what I think I know I am. With this we spend the first block, deepening, so that they can increase this part because all the kids come either with a desire for self-knowledge or with pain: “Something is not working in my life and I have to make some change because it is in my hands”. Then we move on to a second block: now that I know myself a little better, I am in personal development, how do I bond? How am I in a couple? How am I in relationships? Then come other workshops related to me and the world, me and networks, me and sexuality, me and relationships. Here another huge range opens up. Now that I know who I am a little bit more, what am I missing in my relationships? And finally comes this workshop on what are my talents: what have I come into the world for? What are my gifts? So that my life has meaning and that my job is not to work eight hours for money, but that I can contribute with what I am. The last block is all developed in personal branding, time management, talent, vocation, purpose, meaning. Finally, they do a personal project, which is a project without a format. I tell you an anecdote. After a boy came, he went to make us a tayín (traditional cooking vessel used in gastronomy) because it was a way to show that he now, who was on this path, wants to be a cook. It is a presentation of all the tools that have served him and what I want to use them for. And it is to put it at the service of accompanying people, like, well, first I’m going to study nursing assistant, then psychology. So the project is something very personal.
– How did you come to La Akademia?
– I knew La Akademia long before and we had tried in a very rural area. Borja Vilaseca created the model and then everyone implements it where they want, it is something completely voluntary. When I arrived in Ibiza it was just being developed here, it had been done as a first start but no group had come out. So I did a small pilot project and I got in touch with the people who were running it and who had started it here on the island. I immediately began to be part of it, accompanying the kids, because each kid, apart from the training, has 15 hours of personal accompaniment. It is more like a mentor, something like a coach, who accompanies them to integrate whatever the workshops are. Every two workshops there is an individual accompaniment of one hour and I started to accompany the kids and to give some workshops. The following year I started to participate in the direction and have been here ever since. And I am dedicated to accompanying people, I am dedicated to therapy, to coaching since before. It is like the place where I vibrate, where my life has a meaning, a paid meaning and also a voluntary one, and to give to society and to trust that these kids are in the future and that they need this so much not to reach their 40s, their 60s, with so much pain.
– This is a training, a space that is missing in schools and families or peers. You say that schools have a productivist orientation, what happens is that we live in a productivist society. It must be difficult to do what they are doing in a productivist society, in a fast-paced world.
– Very fast-paced. It is very complex, perhaps today a little more so. Our generation and all the previous ones are emotional orphans. There has been no education, it has been very difficult for our families to educate us emotionally when they themselves had not had this education. We are beginning to connect with this. Borja Vilaseca has a very clear commitment with this third block of educational talent, which is, if you discover what you have come into the world for, you will produce. Of course you will. Don’t wait for someone to come and outline the right job for you that has to do with your talents: create it for yourself. Don’t wait for a job that doesn’t fulfill you when you have a clear idea of where you can add and also produce. We all live in this world, we all need material, that is, money, but do something that makes sense, that ends the day tired, but with a smile on your face.
The organization
– ¿How are they organized?
– I am in charge of the pedagogical direction, another person is in charge of the administrative part, another one is the group leader. One of us is always with them. Apart from the person who is giving the workshop, who sometimes happens to be one of us, there is someone who is there accompanying, watching the trip.
– Are they paid for these jobs?
– We get paid, but we don’t get paid in euros. We are very grateful for everything we receive, for the kids, for the learning, for what it means to collaborate, for what it means to coordinate a team of 30 people, for what it means to build a model of horizontality that we have not been taught either. My partner always says “you should get paid for this, because it’s a lot of work”. I think the kids are getting a gift, because it seems that in this society you can’t do anything until you have money. And here they realize that there are a lot of people who don’t know you at all, who take forward a project with no money, no money at all, where it becomes an empowering belief in your life. Not waiting to have something to do something you want to do, but also looking for the strategies to make it happen. So, I think it is a very nourishing project in all senses. – Networking is a more natural language for them, they have grown up there. – It is curious, but many of those who are in La Akademia are not interested in the media. They have a critical spirit, as well as the danger it generates at certain ages, the devaluation, the loss, how the algorithm traps you and you stay there crouched down. And the difficulty they generate in a lot of their friends, the social, because they have learned to socialize through a screen. We also have this profile, that there are some of them that the networks are as if they were 60 years old. It is very encouraging to be in contact with these young people.
– How do you organize the workshops, are they given by the volunteers themselves or do you call on professionals from each area?
– All the workshops are voluntary, all are human design professionals. I teach the conscious communication workshop. We also work with family constellations, for example. Just maybe a little click, but I believe that any tool can be therapeutic. Ceramics can be therapeutic, but in the sense that you can also say “while I am here, I am taking care of myself because I am calm, what is not coming to me anymore is to go running”. Notice that through ceramics I also see the ephemeral nature of life and I learn not to get attached to things. For me, healing comes from realizing that I am doing the same thing and repeating myself and I don’t have a huge range of tools to be freer and give a different answer that has to do with the present and with the concrete situation. Sometimes we see ourselves in robot mode doing what was good for us in childhood, that we adapted and what we have around us has nothing to do with that. So a certain elaboration seems important to me and that is why so many strategies, so many different tools. One may find the Enneagram too closed, but another finds it much more interesting to experience it through a family constellation or meditation. Always put the focus on oneself and how this amplifies me. How I can take this into my life and how it can serve me as a tool to increase my well-being. In the end it’s also like going a little bit out of the normal, out of the paradigm that there are good things and bad things. There are no magic recipes for anyone, there are personal paths to follow.
All free of charge
– It continues to amaze me that this is totally free.
– Totally free of charge. There is no money involved. The only money there may be is that we have to make photocopies and we put it out of our own pocket. And it receives no official or private support. There always has to be a volunteer in terms of space. For several years we did it in a co-working space in Talamanca, called Origen. Now, some girls opened a yoga room in Ibiza and they offer it to us on Saturdays because their objectives also include social projects. And then, since last year, we also have the space at C19, at the Centro Joven de Ibiza.
– How many volunteers are there now?
-There are about 34 of us right now.
– Have you had or do you have people from Formentera?
– Yes, there is a volunteer coming from Formentera. And the kids are totally invited, they just have to commit to come. Commitment is fundamental. At the beginning it seems that the commitment is with La Akademia, with the group, but in reality what they are developing is a commitment with themselves. That when they commit to come, to continue and even if there is resistance, because they also touch deep things; then sometimes they also want to run away. But they continue. And then the motivation. Which are like two things that we give ourselves when you have to be motivated with something. It costs about a quarter to do it. As long as there is no Akademia in Formentera, we are here for the kids are willing to take the boat and join.
