Eight chapters on what Ljubač is, who we owe it to and what we are building together.
There is a place where olive trees planted before you were born are waiting for you. Where the path you walk was cleared by hands you never met. Where the sea does not remember seasons, it remembers people. That place is called Ljubač.
Every dry-stone wall we restore is a thank-you to those who built it by hand, stone by stone, under the Mediterranean sun. Every olive grove we restore continues the work of generations who knew that an olive tree does not grow for you, but for your grandchildren. Tradition is not a burden. Tradition is a compass.
In a world that keeps speeding up, one of the most precious things a person can have is an anchor. Not one that holds you to the bottom, but one that gives you the freedom to drift far, because you know you can come back. Ljubač wants to be that anchor.
An athlete running through an olive grove at a national championship is not only racing the clock. They run through history, through silence, through a landscape shaped by work and love. The ground chose Ljubač, not the other way round.
More than half of the olive groves in Ljubač are neglected. Plots wait for decisions from heirs living in Hamburg, Melbourne and Split. This is not a tragedy, it is an advantage nobody has recognised yet. Not by force, not by law: through trust and shared interest.
Not a destination for volunteers, a volunteer village. Volunteers will live with families, eat at the same table and share the same mornings. Especially outside the season, when the olive trees are waiting for hands. Then a volunteer is not arriving at a tourist destination. They are coming home.
At the end of every Erasmus stay, each student plants one olive sapling. An olive tree lives two hundred, three hundred, five hundred years. That tree knows nothing of borders or seasons. It only knows how to grow.
We are not a travel agency or a sports club. We are a community of people who believe Ljubač is worth it and prove it with work. We restored paths, opened 70 to 80% of the private plots for a national championship and laid the groundwork for a volunteer programme. And this is only the beginning.
“You are welcome. This is yours. Welcome home.”