Blessings is a virtual community dedicated to spiritual accompaniment. After the pandemic, the founder, Olatz Elola, realized how much people needed to experience God's love, even if it was through a screen.
Blessings offers different types of support. For example, Prayplan offers a daily reflection on the Gospel, spiritual exercises, conferences and Catholic news.
OLATZ ELOLA
Founder, Blessings
Blessings' main work is 'Prayplan', which provides faith accompaniment. There are many people who need to live their faith with the support of others, and after the pandemic, we realized that long distances were not barriers, that we could create virtual communities, and that, if necessary, we could create them that way. But, people should not be alone; people should not live their faith alone.
Before Blessings, Elola ran a Catholic decoration web store. Then, she decided to take it a step further and offer spiritual content, starting with her own testimony. She began to share her family's everyday life, what it's like to be married as a Catholic and motherhood.
OLATZ ELOLA
Founder, Blessings
So I created a YouTube channel, an Instagram, and then we started to create the content that we had at that time, which was how our family lives the faith. And suddenly people started to follow us—people who identified with our way of living the faith and the focus was no longer the store, but social media.
For Elola, being on social media is important. She says there are many people who get much of their information from Instagram, so she feels it is important for Catholics to be there as well.
OLATZ ELOLA
Founder, Blessings
Look at how beautiful social media are...You go to social media for the first time and they are so attractive, nice, organized. Everything tends to look perfect. But then you explore them and there is a lot of darkness, a lot of loneliness. There is a lot of searching and longing for love and to be loved, but in a very disordered way. So, it's nice that we can be a little bit of light in that darkness.
There's also a call to reach out to the peripheries that the Pope also talks about.
Blessings currently has more than 30,000 followers and accompanies 80 people daily in their faith.
CA
TR: KG
