Experience life in an eco-village in a beautiful place in Dumenza, Italy

Infos

• 

  Description

  ATTENTION: The min. stay with us is 2 months under these circumsctances. If you would like to come for a shorter period, you are welcome, we have other options. Let us know!
  -
  
  The project was started more than 3 years ago, by a Swiss family of 4. They had a big dream to transform a magical place by the hills of Lago Maggiore into an Ecovillage and to build a community that will live in it. The place has a long history of self-development, it was built as a children’s resort, later it became a Vipassana meditation center for many years and transformed again to be an Osho community. Finally, it is the home of our project.
  
  The mission is clear: to build a community in which we can live more connected to nature, to each other and to ourselves. The journey is long, but every day we are closer to this goal together. We believe in self-growth. As we are growing this project, we are facing challenges, we have conflicts, we have personal struggles, and we grow continuously as an individual by finding solutions and healing. It is the same the other way around too, the more we grow as individuals, our community becomes healthier, more balanced, efficient and colorful.
  
  The Swiss family and others who live here or come here represent a spiritual approach to life, so if you are also open to vipassana meditation, mindfulness, consciousness and holistic approaches, you will find company for great conversations and experiences. Most of the activities and events that we are hosting here are also in this direction, but we also know that life does not have to be spiritual, life is life for all of us.
  
  Other than the family, 5 other people joined to live here permanently for now. Some are really focusing on building the project, for some it is a place to live. We are hoping to have more people living with us. Daily life is more crowded as we also have many visitors during the warmer season. Volunteers usually stay with us for the longest period from the visitors, we also have short term guests who come for a few days, a week or two, to experience living in a community. When we are having retreats, seminars, workshops, all the participants become part of the community for a short period, of course usually not on a very deep level. We are planning to have a lot of these activities in 2025. Some of us are also therapists, you can find different massages, acupuncture, sound healing amongst the treatments we offer.
  We are focusing on creating a satisfying, interesting and communal daily life. We have optional meditation in the morning, some of us are practicing Vipassana meditation, others follow a different school or dont meditate at all. From 07-08 we have an open spot for anyone to host morning movement activities. So depending on who is hosting it, we can practice different styles of yoga, chi kung, dance, stretching, calisthenics. After everyone had breakfast, at 8:30 we have a shorter morning meeting to share feelings and organize ourselves for the day, and around 9 we start 4 hours of focused work. We always eat together for lunch and dinner, around 13 and 19. We have many fixed weekly activities, but also open spots everyday for anybody who would like to facilitate an activity . We practice the Circle Way by Manitonquat, not just on the emotional circle but in the community in general. Usually on mondays we have a bigger meeting to organize and discuss the week ahead of us. Other than this fixed framework, there are often activities popping up around with friends of the community or within the community.
  
  Our meals are mostly vegan, but the general house rule is only vegetarian. So mostly we will not have cheese, milk or eggs, but you can have yours if you would like. We have a garden that is getting bigger and bigger every year, we try to source as much of our food as we can from there. We adopted the Masanobu Fukuoka method, by mulching the soil.
  
  We are aiming to cultivate auto-responsibility, a concept in which everyone is invited to take responsibility for their own. We have developed a structure and a system in which you can practice being a responsible member of a community. For example, we have a big board of simple daily tasks which all of us are taking care of.
  
  We are continuously growing, evolving, experimenting, failing, succeeding, changing and we are open to new input, opinions, suggestions, offers. Let’s grow together!

• 

  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Projets artistiques

  Pratique d’une langue

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Jardinage

  Bricolage et construction

  Baby-sitting et jeux créatifs

  Cuisine/repas pour la famille

  Aide à la maison

  Entretien général

  Aide informatique/internet
• 

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

  ...

  ...

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
• 

  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  Read everything else please, we forgot to write specifically for this part, but hopefully you will know from all the other texts :)

• 

  Projets impliquant des enfants

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

• 

  Aide

  LONG TERM:
  
  We would like to focus on having long-term volunteers, so we will start with this concept.
  There are many areas of our life and work that are best managed by one main responsible, and we would love to have people who are willing to fulfill these roles for a longer period. We are the most active from March to October and it would be our dream to find people who stay with us for these months. Every 2 weeks we have a feedback session, where we can figure out together if you and the community feel well and if you are happy to continue your work. If all is going well, you are welcome to stay with us all the way to October, and of course we are open to talk about even the further future, maybe you will want to live in the community in the end, who knows?
  
  Long-Term Positions:
  
  -KITCHEN/COOK. This means you would spend most of your working hours cooking plant-based food and planning meals. We would also like you to integrate the harvests of our vegetable garden in the meals, so you should keep an eye on the progress of the garden and cooperate with the garden responsibles. Most of the time you will be cooking for 20-30 people, and sometimes even more. Of course you can expect to have helping hands around you, other people will assist you based on your needs. We would be really happy if you bring a creative and colorful mindset to the kitchen, as everybody here really appreciates to eat that way, and it's one of our main goals to nourish our bodies well. We don’t expect you to be a professional chef, its enough to love cooking and to not feel intimidated to cook for a lot of people.
  
  -SOCIAL MEDIA/MARKETING. This means you could cooperate closely with communication team to create content and bring it to our channels, which we have just started to take more seriously. It would be great if you can make nice pictures and videos on your own, but we dont expect you to be a professional. We are happy to give you some freedom in what you are doing, it should be an organic process. For now we are having a strategy in which we have simple daily tasks, another part that is more creative, to carry out different content projects with different people in the community, and the third part is focused on advertising our activities. We are more than open for your suggestions and experimenting with other ideas, systems. Maybe this will not always take all your working hours, so we expect you to be willing to take part in other activities too.
  
  -GARDEN/GARDENER. Every year we are expanding our garden, which means it needs time and effort to attend everything that needs care. Its great if you have some experience, but its more important that you love working with mother Earth. We don’t expect you to work alone, the goal is to have somebody who is always connected to the garden and the processes there, who knows what to do next and who can manage other people helping them. You will also be connected with the kitchen team to help them make the best use of our harvests. This position will not always take all your working hours so we would like you to be open to other tasks too.
  
  -FIREWOOD MANAGER. We spend a lot of time preparing firewood for the winter period, and we would love someone to help maneging this process. We are practicing sustainable forestry with the help and knowledge of Thomas, who has been a forester for 40 years. Ideally, we take care of using machinery and it is enough if you are responsible, physically fit, attentive, ready to learn and able to manage other helping hands to support you. This job is never done alone, so you will always have people around. If you think you are ready to invest a few hours a day into this full process, we look forward to hearing from you. This position will not always take all your working hours so we would like you to be open to other tasks too.
  
  -CONSTRUCTION/RENOVATION. In 2025 we will renovate 2 of our buildings. The works on a smaller house are starting in March, and the other house, which is bigger and the work on it is way more complex, is going to start also druing spring, shortly after March. A solution-oriented, handyman approach is what we are really looking for, ready to make mistakes and ready to learn from them just by doing. There are some specific skills that will come handy throughout the process when you are doing some simple tasks. You are welcome also if this is an area that you really would like to gain experience in and you are excited to spend most of working hours on building tasks.
  
  SHORT TERM And GENERAL HELP:
  
  The minimum stay with us is 2 months, we need this time to get together well and have a deeper, more meaningful experience. There are endless things to do around. You can expect to do gardening, cooking, cleaning, preparing firewood for the winter, taking care of green areas, maintaining the buildings, doing creative projects, processing food and a million different little projects. Of course, when you are more open or skilled to do only some of these, you are welcome to have a preference and focus on your area. We will start to renovate two of our buildings in 2025, so there will be more need for handymans and handywomens than normally, and also learning opportunities about construction and renovation. Additionally, if you are skilled in some construction areas, you can work in them even alone and you are happy to help here, you could come for a shorter period too. If you have knowledge, skill, experience that could be interesting for us and you dont see it here, you are welcome to write to us. For example we didnt list IT and engineering tasks, but they are here, maybe thats your field. Some people don’t want to invest 5 hours of volunteering for 2 months, you can also stay for a shorter period and have a different agreement, you can find this information on our homepage or write to us for details.

• 

  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Allemand: Courant
  Anglais: Courant
  Italien: Courant
  Français: Débutant

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  in the community we speak ITALIAN / ENGLISH / GERMAN
• 

  Hébergement

  We can provide a free sleeping place in one of our dormitory rooms and we have endless space for tents or campers. If requested we also have private rooms with and without bathrooms, but we would like you to be ready to start in a dormitory as we don’t know our capacity so much in advance. All three meals are included, for breakfast you prepare and eat what you prefer (or we often have it buffet style) for lunch and dinner we eat all together. Again, we are aiming to eat mostly vegan, but we are vegetarian in general and we do not allow meat and fish around the project. We also dont allow the use of alcohol and psychoactive substances.

• 

  Autres infos...

  We are located in a wonderful region of Italy. Lake Maggiore, The Alps, the surrounding rivers, mountains, valleys provide endless opportunities to explore in a natural setting. We are 1,5 hours away on foot from Mountain Lema, a nice peak with beautiful view to Switzerland and Italy. There is also a family runned agroturismo 30 minutes walking away where they produce cheese. There is a Monastery just 10 minutes walk from us with friendly and welcoming monks. A nice little city, Luino and the lake is 25 minutes away by car. And if you dont want to go anywhere, you will still be spending your time in a beautiful place 950m high, surrounded by pure nature and away from the noises and the business of urban life. You can drink fresh spring water, see different wild animals, have a cold bath, enjoy the company of many wonderful people. You can become part of a creative hub of post-modern people, share your light and support others in sharing theirs.

• 

  Informations complémentaires

  • 

    Accès Internet

  • 

    Accès Internet limité

  • 

    Nous avons des animaux

  • 

    Nous sommes fumeurs

  • 

    Familles bienvenues

• 

  Possibilité d’accueillir les digital nomads

  We have already some digital nomads here, wich help us sustain economically our place, they help little with works but pay a monthly fee. in Exchange you can participate all our activities, eat healthy local and organic food, practicing healthy lifestyle, enjoy the surrounding nature and breath fresh mountain air, drink fresh mountain spring water.

• 

  Espace pour garer des vans

  we have endless space for campers and tents

• 

  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Plus de 2

Sécurité du site

Feedback (17)