Amanda Lamb inspires Italy life change
Monday 14th of November 2011
Amanda lamb inspired an unemployed woman to move to Italy, an Irish newspaper reports.
Irish expat Fionnuala McKenna was made redundant in 2008 after cuts to her arts centre saw projects fall apart just weeks before completion. But the single mother, in her 40s, turned to A Place in the Sun for inspiration and eventually decided to leave the country.
“I was in a state of shock for a number of months,” McKenna wrote in The Irish Times this week. “The media was rife with tales of other unemployed people emigrating in search of a better life,” she said, adding that America and Australia were too far away, settling on Italy as the ideal destination.
In 2009, McKenns used her SSIA savings to buy a seven-acre olive farm in Puglia, where she produced oil to sell to friends and family. Despite local culture and religious clashes, McKenna is pleased that she was inspired to move, despite the economic concerns on the continent.
“My daughter and boys are all conversing in Italian with their friends and involved in local sports and dance and music, and I truly believe that this is the best gift I could give them while Ireland is going through a recession,” McKenna concluded.
