Editor’s Note
This story of a young engineer’s journey—carrying hope and hardware across continents—reminds us that technical skill, when paired with human solidarity, can transform lives. Matteo Voltolini’s project is a quiet testament to how direct action and ingenuity can address profound needs.
Solidarity
The young man from Valencia spent three months in a mining village in the desert of Madagascar installing a wind turbine that now pumps a thousand liters of water every night and supplies an entire school.
Crossing half the world with two suitcases, a disassembled wind turbine, and the idea of bringing water to a village lost in the desert. That is what Matteo Voltolini did, a 22-year-old Valencian student who decided to leave his engineering classrooms to try to help children in the fourth poorest country on the planet.
His destination was in southern Madagascar, in an arid area exploited by a sapphire mine where children walk kilometers to try to fill a simple water canister. There, in that lawless mining village, Matteo spent three months living with its inhabitants, learning their language, and helping to install a small wind turbine capable of pumping a thousand liters of water every night to supply the local school.
A year later, he returned accompanied by two other students to attempt something even more ambitious: to offer alternatives to the mine. What started as a technical project ended up becoming a story of humanity, faith, and resilience. Matteo tells La Vanguardia how the wind, effort, and a handful of people managed to change the life of an entire village.
He is an Aeronautics student at the Universitat Politècnica de València and at just 22 years old decided to go to a lost mining village in Madagascar. What led him to do it?
“Above all, the desire to share what you know to improve the lives of others. Often what you learn at university stays locked between books or laboratories, and its social impact is limited. Having the opportunity to apply your knowledge to change people’s real lives is a privilege. And if you can do it while getting to know a country, a culture, and a way of life that is totally different, it was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse.”
How did that opportunity arise?
“At university, I found out that there were scholarships to travel to developing countries and collaborate on cooperation projects. My profile, being in Aeronautics, didn’t quite fit, so I was passed from one department to another until I met a guy from Burkina Faso who had come to Valencia on a scholarship. He told me he ran an orphanage there and told me about the NGO that had helped him: Agua Pura, present in Madagascar, Burkina Faso, and Mozambique. I went to meet them and they told me they wanted to install a small wind turbine in Madagascar. They were looking for someone willing to go, and there I was, so I decided to venture into one of the poorest places in Madagascar with two suitcases and a wind turbine to ensure that the school children could have water every day.”
What did he find upon arrival?
“A completely dismantled country. Without infrastructure, with corruption noticeable on every corner, and a poverty that disarms you. But also tremendously joyful, close, and generous people. Crossing the island was an adventure in itself: on buses where twenty people fit, thirty-five go, and on the road you see how the country gradually becomes poorer, how the color fades. It’s like watching a movie that loses its shine.”
What was the place where he was going to live like?
“If you look at Madagascar on the map, you’ll see everything green except for a small, dry brown bald spot in the southwest. That’s where I went. It’s a desert area where no one lived until about 25 years ago, when sapphire deposits were discovered. That triggered a brutal mining fever: thousands of people from all over the country arrived fleeing hunger, and a kind of African Far West was formed, a lawless place full of prospectors, bandits, and survivors. There is no water there, and without water there is no agriculture, no health, no future. A local NGO, BelAvenir, opened a school 15 years ago to provide food and education to the children, but they suffered from the same problem as everyone: the lack of water. That’s why Agua Pura decided to install a wind turbine to help pump it. And that’s where I came in.”
Before you, no white person had spent more than two days in the village. What was it like arriving there?
“It was a tremendous shock. When I said I was going to that place, some girls who had been in other areas of the country looked at me with their eyes wide open and said: ‘You’re crazy, the bugs, the dust, and the misery are going to eat you there.’ But I thought: ‘if one wants to help, one must go where there is need.’ And when I arrived, I understood that I had done the right thing. It was a narrow road with mud and sheet metal huts on the sides, a dry landscape, without trees, without anything. But the people disarm you. You realize that, despite everything, there is humanity in every gaze.”
