Join our eco-living family, creating a community in a village on Pchelina Dam, Bulgaria

Infos

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  Description

  Hi! We are Stanislav and Diana - a family with four kids, ages 11, 9, 5 and 3 years. We live an hour away from Sofia in a village located near Pchelina Dam, where we are in the process of creating a community. Our house is as eco-friendly as we could make it from the old building we got - with clay plastering, wood-fibre insulation, light-earth walls, earthen floors and tadelakt bathrooms. We grow our garden using permaculture principles. Our piece of land is 4000 square meters and behind it is a 5000-square-meters forest that we are trying to revive. Around our place, there are quite a few opportunities for settlement of like-minded families. Our dream is to find new friends to join us in co-creating a community of environmentally and otherwise conscious people who walk gently on Earth and take ownership of our lives, health, education and the planet's well-being, who have fun and grow together, who share food, work, learning, resources and life's bounties to the level each one feels appropriate. We currently have a small Waldorf-inspired kindergarten with another family during weekdays and plan to have a monthly Waldorf playgroup when the weather gets warm, inviting families from the area to come with their kids to sing songs , play finger games and share a potluck lunch, free of charge. Part of that will be a women's gathering and artwork , while the fathers go for a walk with the kids. Each day we do artwork and invite the volunteers to participate in this activity if they wish to. The artwork includes some therapeutic techniques, such as wet-on-wet painting with water colors, beeswax modelling, clay modeling, working with wool (wet technique and sometimes felting with a needle), as well as practical things like making soap, making moisturizers, candle-making, etc. At the moment, we mostly need help with managing the household, including cooking, cleaning, playing with kids, some work in the yard, and of course there are always construction projects. We also have some exciting outdoor projects, such as clay pizza oven, fox-proof hen enclosure, playground areas for the kids, etc. It would be really great for us to have someone come over for a longer period, say over the summer and part of Autumn, and if its a young person there will be a lot of learning opportunities for him/her. We can even schedule some lecture/practice time, or organize together a workshop and include more people. The minimum amount of time we are willing to accept volunteers is 3 weeks, as it takes time to get to know each other and get into a working rhythm. We would love to have someone with a musical background who can teach us to play an instrument or just sing and dance with us.

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Pratique d’une langue

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Enseignement

  Jardinage

  Bricolage et construction

  Baby-sitting et jeux créatifs

  Cuisine/repas pour la famille

  Aide à la maison
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  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  Stanislav is a Bulgarian folk dancer, so he can teach volunteers how to dance the ''Bulgarian way." We can also teach them about Bulgaria and the Bulgarian culture, as well as the Bulgarian language, and last but not least - the Bulgarian cuisine. Our neighbors are a Venezuelan family and they can also share the same things from their own country, other than the dancing. :) There is a Belorussian family also looking to move to our community, and once they do - there will be lots to learn from them too - including how to extract threads from nettle and knit hats and other things from them! We also host volunteers from helpX from time to time. We have had volunteers here from Taiwan, Vietnam, Israel, Greece, Brazil, Spain, Czech Republic and USA, so there is an abundance of cultural exchanges happening here.

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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 are looking for one helper, or a family, to stay with us and help us with the daily tasks of maintaining our space neat, preparing food and playing with the kids. We are offering to provide vegetarian meals to our visitors (including eggs and dairy), as we do not bring meat into the house. It would be nice to have some help with the Waldorf playgroup as well. In the warm seasons, or when the weather allows throughout the year, we will be busy with outdoor projects, as described above. Of course we have a lot of fun and explore the surrounding areas during our daily walks. In the cold seasons, we have quite a few indoor projects as well, including but not limited to plastering, carpentry, creative painting (on windows and wall trims), sewing, waldorf toy-making, etc. We would also like to create some common amenities for the community members in the near future, so we will need help with that as well.

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  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Bulgarian: Courant
  Anglais: Courant
  Espagnol: Courant
  Russe: Intermédiaire

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  Cet hôte a indiqué qu’il souhaitait faire partager sa propre langue ou en apprendre une nouvelle.
  Contactez-le pour en savoir plus.
  
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  Hébergement

  One room in our house with a big double bed, that could be replaced with one or two single beds, if needed. There are also two abandoned houses across from our house that are in decent condition and we can adapt for living. There is internet in the house, hot water and heating of course, and a shared bathroom and kitchen.

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  Autres infos...

  We have a couple of kayaks that we like to paddle in the Dam , which is 4 km away. There is also an adult bike that could be used (and lots of kids bikes) for very nice nature rides, and loooots of kids bikes of different sizes. There are lots of nature hikes in the area. Unfortunately, there is no public transportation, so we go by car to shop in nearby Pernik or Radomir once a week or so. There is public transportation - 20 minutes walk from our house though, which can take people to Pernik and to Kovachevtsi.

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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

  we have had volunteers come with their camper and stay in our yard. It worked out great!

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  Possibilité d'accueillir les animaux

  depends on what kind of pets. we have a dog and two cats, and are planning to get ducks.

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Deux

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  Nombre d'heures attendues

  5 hours a day, 5 days a week

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