Life in the city is becoming more and more unsustainable due to the high rate of contamination, the saturation of people residing and moving around there, as well as the hours of life wasted travelling from one point to another in the city.
The number of people who are looking for a quiet life and to reconnect with nature continues to grow. They are starting to see the solution in rural life.
However, rural depopulation is still an issue. In Spain for example, there are more than 5,000 municipalities (60%) with less than 1,000 inhabitants.
On the other hand, with the pandemic, remote work has become pretty usual. It allows us to work from anywhere and shows that city life is a choice and not a necessity. Rural life doesn’t have to be something opposed to the city.
There are a lot of attractive fields for rural businesses, from sustainable tourism, natural cosmetics, the food sectors and even sustainable fashion for digital nomads.
All fields in which women can make a difference, break the glass ceiling and set off with sustainability as their guiding star.
At Efecto Colibrí we speak with Maria Rodríguez Serrano, co-founder of Como una Cabra, a business school made by women for women that contributes experience and the proximity necessary so that the process of having their own business is easier, more secure and less lonely. At the same time, they put the focus on Triple impact companies in which the goal is to achieve a balance between the economic, social and environmental aspects (also known as “Triple Balance”).
“Como una cabra” was born in Spain in December 2020 when Cristina Navarrete, María Rodríguez, Juan Carlos Guerrero, Fernando Guerrero y Ana Gorostegui, decided to team up to do what they do best, help to start up their own business, with their activism (feminism and environmentalism) and their common dream: to live in a village and work in front of a fireplace.
With the aim of getting rid of the barriers for female entrepreneurship, fighting against climate change and rural depopulation, the founders developed an ecosystem that integrates different agents: female entrepreneurs, experts, entities and service companies into the same network.
To decentralise the collaboration, they created a virtual Slack community in which the actors have the opportunity to share challenges, concerns, opportunities, offer their services and share their knowledge (also available for participants from various Latin American countries).
The same way, at “Como una Cabra», they offer online training in video and direct support to the female entrepreneurs in order to develop their projects or consolidate their rural businesses through specialised business development mentorships.
And that’s not all! They also started to develop activities like specialised courses, podcasts, webinars, and emotional support groups. They work hard to unite experts in different fields of sustainable business opportunities in rural areas and tell them the stories of female pacesetters.
The “Como una Cabra” team is aware that the challenges they face are complex and that they can’t face them alone, so they go for collaborative work and humor as different attributes (if it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable, right?) Additionally, in order to achieve their objectives, create alliances, deals and collaborations with various entities with common purposes like the Spanish Association Against Depopulation (AECD), Rural Citizen, Ruralízate, Furas, Estelar, The Social MBA.
What a compilation, wow! They offer training and mentorships to support budding female entrepreneurs, they weave networks and create alliances so that they don’t have to do it alone. These women are flying high and deserve our colibrí applause! Without a doubt, they are a school that looks for women like them, that are “Como una Cabra” (lit. like a goat, meaning a little strange, quirky, or out of the ordinary) in every sense; women that are not sat dreaming of a world in which they want to live, but build it day after day.
