Crafting for a better world

With a broad smile on his lips, Sébastien Kanarek welcomes his guests. Between the tools, the circular saw and the welding machine on the ground floor of a building in Esch/Alzette, lies the 47-year-old's realm. For a little more than half a year, he has been helping people here with words and deeds.

It is a few coincidences that have brought him from Piennes, 30 kilometres away, to Esch/Alzette. Just four years ago, Kanarek was working in France for a cooperative of public interest, which is comparable to a Luxembourgish societal impact company ("société d'impact sociétal"). At the end of 2019, the idea of a larger digital project germinated in him, for which he had a building in his home municipality in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle in mind. But although the local elected officials are receptive to the idea, progress is slow. Then the covid pandemic brings life to a standstill and events are cancelled one after the other. In this difficult situation, Sébastien Kanarek and his employer parted ways in March 2020 and he continued to pursue the project on his own. Many months later, in September 2020, "they told me that they were interested, but that it would take 'a while'", Kanarek recalls. But the Frenchman doesn't want to wait any longer; after all, the project is also supposed to restart his professional life. When his job counsellor advised him to submit his project to non-profit organisations both in France and on the other side of the border, because he had always been active in associations anyway, it turned out to be a decisive turning point. The building in Piennes remains unused to this day.