Share your enthusiasm and join us at our ecovillage in Ariège, France

Details

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  Description

  🙋‍♀️ Hey you! Thanks for reading our profile (entirely, if you contact us, please!)
  
  ⚠️ We're also looking for someone who could be taking care of our 1 yo baby for some hours during the day, and be responsible for a clean and warm house (means mainly cleaning the shared kitchen, and keep the fires going in the 3 fireplaces). So that I (Florane) can also work outside without carrying a baby on my back all the time! I know this is not the most sexy tasks but that would be a great help for us!
  
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  🟠 Soonest availabilities: from beginning of March!
  🟢 Mondays or Tuesdays work out best for us in terms of arrival days.
  🟣 Long-term volunteers (several months) very welcome!
  🚭 The ecovillage is a non-smoker area and we don't welcome cats or dogs (not to bother wildlife already thriving here).
  
  
  🔵 Who are we :
  7 humans are living here for now : Jean-Marc, Gaëtan & Claire, and the Flos (Florane and Florian) and their daughters Gaïa (6) and Yin (1). Little by little some other people or families will settle!
  A dozen chickens also live here, as well as all the wildlife thriving around!
  
  🔴 The project :
  The place was bought in spring 2023 and is now being transformed into an ecovillage. There are 45 hectares of forest and green grazing lands, we can see the Pyrennees mountain from up the hill, there's a big pond where we can hear the frogs and the ducks... Several houses are already built and need to be renovated. The goal is to create :
  🏘️ A living area - several families are in the process of joining the project to become residents ! That's our first step : renovating the houses so that people can live here and bring their energy into the project.
  🌱 A permaculture collective farm (in the long run): vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, algeas, nuts, honey, maybe cheese. Our goal is to create a resilient farm, with several farmers, that can provide food for the residents and nearby villages.
  🚸 A place to learn and share : hosting retreats, workshops, trainings, children camps, conferences, even festivals one day!
  
  💧 Hosting :
  This is still the very begining of our project. Volunteers are fully part of this project : you're like a small water drop, and one day a wonderful river will flow, thanks to all of you. We need YOU to keep this project alive ! We really want to create here the atmosphere we had so many times during our travels, when we were volunteers : a group of people from many different places doing projects together and creating something wonderful !
  
  We welcome: motivated and enthusiastic people ! Eager to learn and who are happy to work. Responsibility is also very important : we'd like you to be able to wash your dishes without us asking for it, not to wait until the compost toilets overflow to empty it in the compost bins, who are able to use a broom when the floor is dirty... We can't welcome phones-addicts. And responsibility towards emotions also : I am responsible of how I feel.

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Art Projects

  Help with Eco Projects

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Farmstay help

  Babysitting and creative play

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  General Maintenance
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  Interests

  

  Mountain

  

  Camping

  

  Nature

  

  Yoga / Wellness

  

  Dancing

  

  Water sports

  

  Outdoor activities

  

  Hiking

  

  Cycling

  

  Architecture

  

  Animals

  

  DIY & crafts

  

  History

  

  Plant care

  

  Music

  

  Art & design

  

  Books

  

  Photography

  

  Languages

  

  Gardening

  

  Cooking & food

  

  Writing

  

  Performing arts

  

  Drawing & painting

  

  Carpentry

  

  Astronomy

  

  Hitchhiking

  

  Sustainability

  

  Self development

  

  Farming
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  UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

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  What's this?
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  ✔ We offer :
  • A chance to learn more about carpentry and building wooden houses.
  • Shared meals with other volunteers and most of the time with at least one resident.
  • Moments of relaxation, going to swim in the huge lake nearby (in summer!) or in the river,
  • An amazing place to meditate (or sing or dance or just walk!) in the forest...
  • Deep conversations (and not deep also!) about our dreams, our pasts, sharing visions of the world...
  • Learning about ecovillages thanks to our knowledge and experience.
  • And about other interesting subjects, thanks to our library, but unfortunately the books are almost all in French ;)
  
  ✖ We cannot offer :
  If you're looking for being with a French family all the time, like an immersion in a French family life, always cooking together, spending every evenings and days off together, etc. That's not the right place for you. Here live several families who also need their time just by themselves. We are now sharing the house together and with the volunteers but we cannot be always with people : we need to be alone sometimes (it's maybe because we have children and because we have a looooot of things to do for now - the beginning of the project). Just to be clear about this expectation we cannot meet.
  
  Please do not contact us here if you're interested in joining as a resident. The volunteer status and "maybe future resident" process is not the same. If you want to join us as a resident, I'm sure you'll find our website ;)

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  Projects involving children

  This project could involve children. For more information see our guidelines and tips here.

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  Help

  🛠 What's on the menu at the moment :
  We are building 8 wooden houses with Gaëtan, the carpenter who lives in the ecovillage.
  Some of the steps you'd be involved in : putting the tiles on the roofs, insulation (wood fiber), making the house wind and rain proof (outside) and steam-proof (inside), create the metallic pieces around windows, sanding and oiling the inside wooden panelling, outside wooden cladding... And everything around this big construction mission. Please note that, for now, we don't need help for agricultural works.
  
  And daily tasks are basically:
  🍽 Cooking for the volunteers,
  🧹 Leaving a clean and tidy kitchen after meals,
  🪵 Bring some firewood in the house if it's cold,
  🚽 Empty your compost toilets...
  
  So : we're looking for volunteers with wood skills - good handy(wo)men. You can use a drill ? a screwdriver? have a nice work ethic (able to remember where this tool was before using it...?) ! Motivated, enthusiastic and hard-working people, also creative because we value that a lot :). And... Who can cook for several people. Yeah I know, we're looking for the perfect volunteers 😁 !
  
  We receive a lot of messages, especially in spring and summer, so I need to be sure you read our profile before contacting us : please copy "montbelarbre ecovillage" in the title of your message.
  
  👷🏼 We provide everything for safety : safety shoes, safety glasses, gloves, earplugs, masks, old t-shirts for painting or dirty stuff...
  
  🎨 Our way is giving a lot of freedom for volunteers:
  After two weeks we would usually ask you to have your "creative project", for example going around the place and say : "hey, I have skills to draw something beautiful in your living room, are you okay to buy some paint for me?" or "oh, this tree is so beautiful, can I build some benches to put around it?". Someone made a furniture to hold all the spices jar in the kitchen, another draw the map of the whole place... To leave a small piece of you here :)

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  English: Fluent
  French: Fluent
  Spanish: Beginner

  This host offers a language exchange
  Of course if you want to speak French it's a good place to come ;) Some of us would like to improve our Spanish.
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  Accommodation

  🛖 Accommodation :
  In the main house, we have 2 bedrooms with two single beds each, and another bedroom with two bunk beds. Compost toilets and shared bathroom with other volunteers.
  
  🥘 Food :
  Organic only. It's important for us ! We provide basic vegetarian food but we don't provide things like coffee, chocolate, peanut butter,... If you need something more, there's a small supermarket not so far, we can lend a bicycle.
  We are not vegan nor vegetarian, so we sometimes cook meat for ourselves : just saying, in case that's a problem for you.
  
  🪥 Ecological products :
  Please bring ecological soap, schampoo, toothpaste, deodorant... That's important for us also. We have a "less and less plastic waste" and "buy organic/local" policy here.
  We provide the washing machine liquid.

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  What else ...

  📶 There's no phone reception here. We put WiFi 4 hours per day, during time off. If you need more, you can walk 5mn from the main house, and there is reception !
  
  🚆 To come here by public transport :
  • From Toulouse, there's a 1h train to Pamiers and then a 45mn bus to Aigues-Vives.
  • From Carcassonne, there's a 1h train to Limoux and then a 45mn bus to Chalabre.
  👍🏼 Hitchhiking is very common in this area, a lot of volunteers managed to reach the ecovillage this way !

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  A little more information

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    Internet access

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    Limited internet access

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    We have pets

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    We are smokers

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    Can host families

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  Space for parking camper vans

  This host can provide space for campervans.

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  More than two

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