Heaven on Earth 🪴

Volunteering in a Farm - Community Experience

This place is a real heaven on earth. The nature and the people are amazing. the work is not that hard but the chats and the life experience and wisdom that you can hear from Filip and Trente are priceless.
every single moment there is worthy. 
Filip and Trente decided to offer this amazing land and space for Yoga Retreats to connect with your inner soul and the nature. So they host a lot of Yoga retreats and they want volunteers to help them managing and working on the land.

In October and November they will be harvesting the olives to make olive oil. You are welcome to give us a hand.
Trente and Filip, an American/Belgian couple retired and young of heart and spirit building a holistic community on the slopes of Mount Etna Volcano. They are welcoming brave hearts for longer stays especially from October till April. Most of the work involves clearing the land, weeding and taking care of the vegetable garden.

The property is around 15 ha (150.000sqm, 40+ acres) on terraced slopes with dry stone rock walls (without cement) on the Etna volcano and facing the Ionian sea and the mainland Calabria. The place is 1 km form Presa, a small town with 80 inhabitants, and 3 km from Piedimonte Etneo, where you can find more things to do. You will either be housed in the villa or in one of the tiny houses on the property. Depending on the number of volunteers you will have your own bedroom or share it with other volunteers.

What the volunteer has to do?

5 hours per day of the following:

✔ Painting and Cleaning

✔ Building and Repairing

✔ Gardening

✔ Farming

Requirements:

✔ Intermediate English 

✔ Over 22 years old

✔ Accepts Solo & Couples

 About the Program:

At this Program the host is looking for physically strong people who are not afraid of working hard. Would you like to live in a community based environment where you help realizing a dream, then this is for you. Apart from farm help required there are also construction and renovation tasks. They are restoring an 18th century Palmetto (wine maker). So if you love a challenge and nature, there is plenty of indoor and outdoor work. We are looking for help all year round, especially during the months of harvest: September, October and November. They welcome all those who enjoy working whether outdoors or in nature with a joyful passion.

We live in a community on the property with several people in eco tiny houses, villas, campers and tents. We share meals, work and good conversations. Looking forward to meeting you

In the weekends, the best thing you can do is renting a car with the rest of the volunteers to go somewhere else and spend sometime around the island - you can get the rental car place from Filip & Trente.

The Wifi in the volunteer's accommodation inside is not really good. but outside you can always have Data.
it's not a big deal because the purpose is to disconnect from the internet and connect with the nature and with the volunteers.
all the buildings in the property have good wifi and huge spaces, so you can use it whenever you want.

🚫 Please skip if:

• You are hoping to learn Italian. Main conversation is in English. Our Italian sucks.
• You have physical problems. You need to be physically strong, so if you have back problems or any other state of mind that disables you from doing physical work, please skip.
• You have heavy emotional problems. We are not qualified as your shrink, nor parents.
• You only have a week to come over. Minimum stay is three weeks. We welcome volunteers who are looking for a long term stay, especially during the winter months. However we evaluate the situation every week and only continue when all of us are happy with each other's company/work.
• You don't have travel insurance.
• You are looking for a cheap hotel.

🧑‍🌾 What Exactly Will You Do as a Volunteer?

✔ Helping pruning the olive trees, taking away the branches and burn them, in November - February.
✔ Helping pruning the vines, taking away the branches and burn them, in January - March.
✔ Helping building dry stone walls in the fields.
✔ Weeding the garden.
✔ Cleaning out the pool and preparing for Spring / Summer, in April - May.
✔ Spraying the olive trees with bio products, in February - March.
✔ Painting walls, doors and fences inside and outside.
✔ Cleaning up ashes from the volcano.

Working hours differs depends on the season.
In Winter you can start at 9:30 and summer at 8:00.
the point is to finish 25 hours a week. doesn't matter how many hours you do a day.
It's always the best thing to do is communicate with Filip and Trente with everything related to your work.

🏠 Accommodation:

We provide Accommodation in a cute bedroom villa where you will have your own room or share it, depending on the number of volunteers we have at that time. You live, cook, clean together and there is a common living space where in the evening you can socialize with each other. We don't provide TV. We mainly eat vegetarian, but don't mind the exception once in a while. We provide basic food, mostly organic. We don't provide alcohol, meat, fish, sweets, or soda. So if you are in need of any of those, you have to provide for them yourselves. We share daily lunch and sometimes dinner with you and work together. Sometimes we will take you on a trip to the volcano, beach or Alcantara river. This depends on how long you stay with us and how good we get along. If you come October/November we will harvest olives and you will be able to experience the process from 'olive on the tree' to 'extra pure virgin olive oil'.
Presa is a small village (80 inhabitants) and is 2 km away. Pedemonte is a bit bigger (3000 inhabitants) and 4 km away.

📆 Registration Dates:

Program Availability: All year long

• Days off: 2 days per week.
• Minimum period for volunteering: 3 weeks (Preference is given to those who choose a longer period)

💳 Registration Fees:

• $500 - HomeAwe Fees.

Regarding registration fees, flight costs and living expenses in Switzerland, this opportunity is invaluable. A regular tourist trip would undoubtedly cost more. Here, the experiences you will have with HomeAwe are unique. And the daily life is relatively affordable.

📋 Registration Process:

1. Sign Up through the program's link down below - your details and answers to the questions will be reviewed and based on that, your acceptance will be determined. (It is preferable not to hesitate in providing clear and explicit answers to the questions without any sense of shyness. The clearer, more spontaneous and heartfelt your answers are, the higher the likelihood of your acceptance).
If we do not contact you within 2 weeks, it means that you have not been accepted.
If you are accepted, we will communicate with you via email to arrange the payment of the registration fees to reserve your spot in the program.

2. After you Sign Up, you'll receive an email that has a link to pay the registration fees to HomeAwe.

3. Have a personal interview with HomeAwe for introduction and further explanation of details.
After the interview, your acceptance will be official 100%. If, for some reason, you are not accepted after the interview, the registration fee will be refunded on the same day.
Once you are officially accepted 100%, with or without an interview, there is no refund for the registration fees, even in case of an emergency. The fees will be retained until your participation in another program later on if you cancel your participance a month before at least. if you cancel your participation for any reason as a last minute call during the last month then there is no refund and there will be no spots in other programs later on.

4. After applying all the steps before you will be registered officially (all your details will be provided to the host) and  we will provide you with the host's WhatsApp number/email to communicate with them directly, to arrange your arrival day (flights) and to get to know you better before you arrive