The topic of this workcamp is to protect its unique flora and fauna. Volunteer should come prepared to take part in a range of outdoor environmental activities in the Green Belt. This is a project for nature lovers. You will work all the time outside from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. (with breaks)!
Accomodation & food:
You will sleep in a building with different rooms. The accommodation is very comfortable and nice.
Location & leisure:
Please be prepared to live in a very remote area, far away from shops or restaurants. You will live and work in the nature.
Together with the employees from the Wahnbach Reservoir Association, you will be completing various conservation work projects around the reservoir. On the one hand, the balsam at the tributaries has to be eliminated, otherwise it displaces native bank plants. On the other hand, you will carry out maintenance work in meadow areas to promote the development of special plants and you will build nesting boxes and repair the barriers around the Wahnbach reservoir. If there is still time, you will check and renew the signage of the trail. You can learn a lot about drinking water and water conservation in this camp. There is a registration fee of 50 EUR for participants who are not from Germany.
Accomodation & food:
Idyllic, but also remote house with several beds in each room.You will cook together.
Location & leisure:
The camp is located in a very beautiful region of Germany – rural, but with big cities such as Cologne, Bonn and Düsseldorf nearby. You can therefore go on numerous excursions during the camp. There is an outdoor swimming pool in Much (10km away) and your accommodation building has a large outdoor area with a campfire area. Koblenz and Mainz are also towns along the river Rhine that are also worth a visit.
15km south of the Berlin city border lies Rangsdorf, a place with around 11,000 inhabitants and a large amount of nature around the edge of the large Rangsdorf lake. In order to bring the landscape for visitors and nature lovers, a connected system of hiking trails has been consistently developed since 2005 and new elements are constantly being added. With help from your team, we will be working together on the climate garden under the guidance of local landscapers' association and in cooperation with the Berlin-Brandenburg airport company. Tasks in the climate garden include general gardening work, such as mowing, raking, weeding and watering plants. As well as this, a drywall, an awning and a wooden fence need to be built. We will also be building a colourful entrance gate and other small things such as a seating area and watchpoint, signposts or birdhouses. Most of the work will be done by hand. There will be local partners such as foresters, nature conservation authorities and employees of the Rangsdorf community who are able to help with more complicated tasks. Besides this, there will be a small summer party to organise in order to celebrate with the children and families from Rangsdorf.
Accomodation & food:
You will be staying in a primary school. There is a barbecue area and a volleyball court in the garden. You will make the 5km journey from your accommodation to the work-site by bicycle. The group will prepare and cook meals together.
Location & leisure:
On the outskirts of Rangsdorf you will find typical landscapes of Brandenburg such as fields, meadows, small lakes and ponds and forests. The bicycles will be available to you for the entire duration of the camp, so you can cycle to the nearby lake (around 2.5km away), the train station (around 3.5km away) and the climate garden (5km away).
Requirements:
You must be able to ride a bike! There is an extra administration fee of 50 € for participants who are not from Germany.
The numerous historical castles and parks in the Berlin-Brandenburg region are managed and preserved by the Prussian Castle and Garden Foundation. The town of Potsdam, with its historical assets (such as the Sanssouci Castle and its grounds) is one of the central points of this cultural landscape, which has been developing for over 300 years. You will be involved in the extensive gardening work in the Park Sanssouci and can get a strong insight into this diverse field of work. In the Charlottenhof Park, which was created in 1883 by P. J. Lenné, you will help to maintain paths, flowerbeds and lawns in order to sustain the garden's current beauty. Through your different contributions in the parks, you will learn about the many diverse aspects of garden and park facilities. There is an additional administration fee of 50 € for participants who are not from Germany.
Accomodation & food:
You will be staying in a school with the possibility of showering at the nearby sports pitch.The group will prepare and cook meals together.
Location & leisure:
Since you'll be so close to the region's capitals, Potsdam and Berlin, you'll have many opportunities during your free time to visit the numerous tourist and natural hotspots, such as the many lakes and forests around. For the duration of the camp you will receive a travel ticket which is valid for all public transport around Potsdam.
The volunteers are welcome to help the association to domesticate a piece of abandoned land and make useful for sustainable gardening. Together you will create garden beds and afterwards plant there herbs, vegetables, shrubs and trees. Later on this area will be used for social purposes and as a meeting place as well.There will be all kind of gardening work to do, sometimes physical demanding (for the one which like to feel and act with the personal strength !).
Study part:
During your volunteering you can learn a lot about Perma Culture, which is a concept where selected plants are grown together in a way that a reduced input of energy and fertilizer is needed. There was given the Alternative Nobel Price to the inventor of this cultivation method !You will learn gardening work by doing them. It is a great chance to get experience in the agricultural area, learn about permaculture and sustainable use of nature. At the same time you can see the association as an good example of an alternative and very social way of producing and consuming food. As there will be close contact to German native speakers, this workcamp is good possibility to improve your German language skills
Accomodation & food:
You will live in a very big house at the edge of the village Carlow which is surrounded by a beautiful garden and landscape. It lies approx. 2 km away from Eschenhof. There are different options where volunteers can stay overnight: a common room, rooms for 2-3 persons or even a tent. However most of the time you will spend outdoor. There is a shelter with tables and benches where you can eat and play all together, a bar and a fireplace, as well as many beautiful areas for chilling. It would be great if you bring some musical instrument you can play. There will be a lot of time in the evening to sing and dance all together.There is a supermarket nearby where you can buy daily products.
Please find first impressions about the place of your accommodation:
http://pappelweg-drei.de/haus.htm
Location & leisure:
Groß Rünz and Carlow are small villages located in the Northwest-Mecklenburg region, which is famous for its beautiful alleys and lakes. In about 2 km distance you can find a beautiful place for swimming. The medieval town of Lübeck, with its numerous sights, is about 23 kilometers away. The Baltic Sea with its nice beaches and coves is not far either. A visit to selected places of the nature reserve is planned as well. There will be a joint decision which places the group will visit.
Age:
18-26
Location:
Groß rünz
Language(s):
English, German
Airport:
HAM: Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)Vegetarian food will be available
In the last years with the help of several workcamps there was created a new seminar room. It is set up in a sustainable manner, which means that are only used ecological materials. This year volunteers are invited to help to start a new project which once will be an innovative and interactive schoolyard where visitors can experience the sustainable use of natural resources.Additional work like making firewood can be done. As every year, volunteers are invited to get to know the local Perma Culture garden and do some gardening there. While looking after the plants, there this the possibility to harvest fruits. Of course there is also the opportunity to get to know about the idea of a Permaculture with its, plants, animals and environment.Therefore we are looking for motivated young people who are interested in handicrafts, advanced training and gardening/landscaping.
Study part:
How to create a productive garden which grows plants and feeds animals in a way that only a minimum input of energy and resources are required to achieve maximum sustainability to the environment? Interesting ecological and cultural projects/information from your country is very welcome.
Accomodation & food:
The participants are accommodated in the big seminar room. Food will be prepared together in the big kitchen of the seminar house.
Location & leisure:
The project will take place in a famous river hill and cultural landscape in the middle of Saxony at the foot of the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), 35 km from Dresden, 15 km from Freiberg.The afternoons and evenings, also weekends are free for personal use: sports, fieldtrips in the region and to Freiberg, swimming. There will be a group of around 5 local German volunteers participating in the workcamp. Good possibility to improve your German language skills. In the last weekend, volunteers will join the summer party of the University in the Farmhouse.
Age:
18-26
Location:
Gossberg
Language(s):
English, German
Airport:
DRS: Dresden (Dresden, Germany)Vegetarian food will be available
This year, the workcamp participants will be again helping out at the Celtic Festival in Nagold. Local clubs and associations will be participating in the festival and you will be helping them out with the preparations for music, dance and international food as well as constructing some of the wooden structures for the festival grounds. On other days, you will work on various environmental tasks within the community of Nagold.
Accomodation & food:
The group will be staying in the youth centre. Two sleeping rooms with beds and a large kitchen are provided. Please bring a sleeping bag Showers are available at the swimming pool nearby. Take a look at the YOUZ youth centre here: http://www.youznagold.de/YOUZ2012/wordpress/
Location & leisure:
Nagold is situated in the beautiful Black Forest and has about 22,000 inhabitants. The youth centre, located in the inner city of Nagold, is a meeting point for young people aged 14-20. Beside many other possibilities to spend time in the youth centre you will find rooms and equipment to play music, to dance and make videos and plenty of other things to spend your leisure time. Trips to Stuttgart and Tuebingen, hiking in the Black Forest, horse riding, swimming and playing beach volleyball are only some of the possible activities. Local youth will be around at almost all times, so participants can look forward to getting in touch with them
Nearby the youth accommodation houses that are part of Lohra Castle complex there is a camping site which can be used by youth groups. A former agricultural building will be rebuilt into a sanitary house for campers. Therefore it is necessary to construct a water line to this building. An excavator will dig the line and the volunteers will accompany this work by collecting stones and bringing in an insulating layer of sand. They will also help to dig small parts where the excavator does not reach. Later they will, under the guidance of a craftsman, lay the water pipes and put afterwards the material which had been dig out back into the ditch and close the line. The remaining material will be used to level the ground at other parts of the castle area. Besides that the volunteers will take care of the nearby located natural protected area, a huge meadow with old scattered fruit trees, that was for a long time out of maintenance. The participants will collect stones and branches covered under the grass to enable to mow and collect the grass and afterwards level the ground.
Accomodation & food:
ACCOMMODATION:shared rooms with 2 - 5 beds in 3 guest houses, warm shower (limited hot water), 1 camp kitchen (cold water), coal-burning stovesFOODThe meals will be prepared together as they are part of the community life, what means that every participant will be responsible for the meal at least once during its stay. So it would be very nice if the participants could bring typical recipes from home in order to introduce each other to the preparation of food from all over the world.
Location & leisure:
Lohra Castle is situated in the heart of Germany in Northern Thuringia. The castle, which is surrounded by a scenic hilly landscape, is located on the edge of a nature reserve area. Being one of the largest castles in Thuringia, the history of the castle Lohra begins in the Middle Age. The castle is more than 1,000 years old. Today, it includes twenty buildings from different times: medieval fortifications, remnants of a tower from the 11th century, a Romanesque chapel, a manor house from the Renaissance period as well as stables and granaries from the 19th and the early 20th centuries. The ensemble is situated in the centre of a beautiful forest. For years Lohra Castle was vacant. In the 1990s Open Houses started to restore the castle and to revive it by cultural activities. Since that time, a large number of Workcamps, Building Weeks, exhibitions, concerts and other activities with international participants took place in the castle.LEISURE TIMEThe camp places are mostly situated in small villages in rural areas, so the participants should not expect busy places and normal city activities for the leisure time during the working days. Small trips in walking distance are possible in the afternoon. On the weekends it is possible to organise an excursion to nearby cities or to have other leisure activities.
Age:
18-35
Location:
Großlohra, germany
Language(s):
English, German
Airport:
LEJ: Leipzig Halle (Leipzig, Germany)This project is suitable for disabled volunteersVegetarian food will be available
« I would recommend participating in a workcamp, especially with VAP, who ensured that I found a project to suit me and provided essential training for me in preparation for my trip. Being part of a workcamp really is a life-changing experience, oh, and it looks great on your CV! »
