Volunteering for Eco, IC type communities?

Not really sure where to put this, so please move if it is in wrong place.

We're gearing up (3-5 year plan) for a full time travel  lifestyle, and one thing we'd like to do is assist certain communities. Being on the road means we can get to a fair amount of places which gives us the opprotunity to expand our volunteer type services. However, I can't find a site that helps coordinate such things for the type of communities we're looking to help.

Help intentional, eco villages with a new building project. Spend a month helping out a homesteader family in need. Assist a co-housing group with their gardening. Volunteer for altnertive building procjects like straw-bale housing or building grey-water systems. etc etc

There are ones for Habitat, several for US volunteering, the fed and state parks, but can't find one for communities. There are individual ones for places like a city garden, which is good but a central registration place would be much more helpful in our assist efforts.

Anyone have any ideas? Know of such a site or off-line organization?


Kind regards,

See

Wow - excellent questions. 

My first thought is ic.org for communities.  I know that I used that to go and visit lots of communities and to learn about some of their projects.

Next, for farming, check out organicvolunteers.org and google for (i think) woofers (WOOF?).  A woofer shows up at a farm for a few days to maybe a month or two.  Usually the woofer gets room and board in exchange for work.  The organic volunteers deal is a bit different - you commit to the season and then you get room, board and a small weekly stipend.

But it sounds like you want something like the woofer program, but more for eco building.  I don't know of a site that does that - but that would be a really good one. 

I know that a lot of the eco building sites I have visited have incomplete projects.  I know several that have "work parties" where people travel rather far to work for a couple of weeks (chipping in for food and the like - and staying in tents). 

I wonder if spending the summer at "the homestead" or at cobville might be worth part of your trip.

Hi See,

For eco building, you might try the national Natural Building Network, http://nbnetwork.org/home/. It could take more legwork, in that they have an online members directory by location which could be used to contact folks in the area(s) you'll be traveling through. That is unless someone who administers the network has a lead for you.

Locally, such as here in the Seattle, we have the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild, http://ecobuilding.org/, which again might take some major efforts to find someone open to or looking for volunteer help.

BTW, cobville is http://www.cobcottage.com/, and the Homestead next door to Cob Cottage (Cobville) doesn't have its own website, but is listed on ic.org at http://directory.ic.org/5962/Mountain_Homestead.

Thanks. Close to what I need and give a good start.

It's been a few days, what did you find?