Share your enthusiasm and help us around our ecovillage in Ariège, France

Infos

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  Description

  🙋‍♀️ Hey you! Thanks for reading our profile (entirely, if you contact us, please!)
  
  ➜ Soonest availabilities: now!
  For at least 3 weeks.
  We won't host from the 15th of December til the 12th of January 2025.
  
  ➜ 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).
  
  ⚠️ The main task at the moment is carpentry, so that's what you'll be doing, with our carpenter Gaëtan :)
  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 ahah!
  
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  ❖ Who are we? ❖
  Two people are taking care of this Workaway profile : you will be talking to either Florane or Nathalie.
  
  10 humans are living here permanently for now : Jean-Marc, Gaëtan & Claire, Nathalie & Tomer and their son Pom (6), and the Flos (Florane and Florian) and their daughters Gaïa (5) and Yin (less than 1 year old). Three generations, several nationalities.
  Little by little some more families will settle!
  A dozen chickens also live here.
  
  ❖ The project ❖
  We bought a place in spring 2023 and we are transforming it 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!
  
  This is still the very begining of our 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 !
  
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  ❖ Hosting ❖
  Volunteers are fully part of the project. We've been volunteers during several years during our travels and we would like to host now!
  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... And we don't welcome phones-addicts ;)
  
  We prefer to host people for at least one month as we want you to feel at home in our place, and we can know each other better... :)

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Projets artistiques

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Jardinage

  Bricolage et construction

  S’occuper des animaux

  Cuisine/repas pour la famille

  Aide à la maison

  Entretien général
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  Centres d’intérêt

  

  Montagne

  

  Camping

  

  Nature

  

  Yoga / bien-être

  

  Danse

  

  Sports nautiques

  

  Activités en plein air

  

  Randonnée

  

  Cyclisme

  

  Architecture

  

  Animaux

  

  Bricolage / artisanat

  

  Histoire

  

  Soin des plantes

  

  Musique

  

  Art et design

  

  Livres

  

  Photographie

  

  Langues

  

  Jardinage

  

  Cuisine et alimentation

  

  Écriture

  

  Arts du spectacle

  

  Dessin et peinture

  

  Menuiserie

  

  Astronomie

  

  Auto-stop

  

  Dev. durable

  

  Dev. personnel

  

  Ferme
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  Objectifs de développement durable de l’ONU que cet hôte essaie d'atteindre

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  Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
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  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  ❖ We offer ❖
  
  - A chance to learn more about carpentry and building wood houses.
  - Shared lunch 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 the 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 ;)
  
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  ❖ 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.
  
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  Please do not contact us here if you're interested in joining as a resident. The volunteer status and "maybe future resident" process isn't the same. If you want to join us permanently, I'm sure you'll find our website ;)

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  Projets impliquant des enfants

  Ce projet peut impliquer des enfants. Pour en savoir plus, consultez nos directives et conseils ici.

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  Aide

  ➜ We provide everything for safety : safety shoes, safety glasses, gloves, earplugs, masks, old t-shirts for painting or dirty stuff...
  
  ❖ What's on the menu at the moment ❖
  🏠 We are at the beginning of building 8 wooden houses with Gaëtan, a carpenter who lives in the ecovillage. He needs some help ! So, there this, which is the main thing, and around this, there's also:
  - Cut and store the firewood for next winter !
  - Create a parking lot
  - Dig all the trenches for water/electricity...
  -...
  
  And daily tasks are basically:
  - Taking care of the chickens (feeding them and opening the chicken coop)
  - Cooking for the volunteers,
  - Leaving a clean and tidy kitchen after meals,...
  
  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.
  
  
  ➜ 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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  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Anglais: Courant
  Français: Courant
  Espagnol: Débutant

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  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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  Hébergement

  ❖ Accommodation ❖
  In the volunteers house, 5 bunk beds, with showers and compost toilets.
  If you prefer to have your own space... Well, please bring your tent :)
  
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  ❖ Food ❖
  ➜ Organic only. It's important for us :)
  ➜ Vegetarian
  ➜ We provide vegetables, fruits, eggs, legumes (lentils, chickpeas...), bread, rice/pasta/couscous, soy sauce, spices, tomato sauce, coconut cream, butter... Things for simple menus.
  ➜ But we cannot provide things as cheese, alcohol, coffee, chocolate, peanut/almond butter, or stuff like that! If you need it, there's a small supermarket not so far, we can lend a bicycle :)
  Just so you know, we are not vegan nor vegetarian, so we sometimes cook meat for ourselves. Just saying, in case it's a problem for you.
  
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  ❖ 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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  Autres infos...

  ❖ There's no phone reception here. We put WiFi 4 hours per day, during time off (morning, noon, end of afternoon). If you need more, you'll need to go 5 mn walk from the main house :)
  
  ❖ To come here by public transport : from Toulouse (or Carcassonne) : take a 1h train to Pamiers (or Limoux) and then a 45mn bus.
  The stations we can come and pick you up from are Aigues-Vives or Chalabre.
  Hitchhiking is also very common in this area, a lot of volunteers have managed to reach the ecovillage this way :)

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  Informations complémentaires

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    Accès Internet

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    Accès Internet limité

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    Nous avons des animaux

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    Nous sommes fumeurs

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    Familles bienvenues

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  Espace pour garer des vans

  Cet hôte a de la place pour les vans.

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Plus de 2

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  Nombre d'heures attendues

  5 hours a day, 5 days a week

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