campervanning, wooffing, volunteering in Portugal & Spain...with 2 young kids :)

Hey Permies,

My family and I have the plan to explore Portugal and Spain in a campervan to try and volunteer/intern/wooff in interesting permaculture projects, eco villages, communities organic farms and the like. Besides getting new experiences and adventures we also want to scout these countries to eventually settle somewhere.

We realise this will be quite a mission as we have 2 young kids but we don't want to let our kids be a reason not to follow our dreams. Are there any people with experience in doing these kinds of things with kids? Do you know cool projects or farms where kids are welcome or have any other awesome ideas we haven't thought of yet?

At the moment we are just in the orientating phase of our plan so we won't be driving of into the sunset just yet

Thanks for any input,

Ties

Wish I could help you re specific places/projects but I don't really know of any that would be specifically kid-friendly. However, both countries are pretty family-oriented and kid-friendly in general, so if you are dealing with locals and not transplants, I'd say you're pretty likely to find people/places who would be fine with having kids around without too much trouble.

How old are your kids? That might be important.

Also, what kind of place are you looking for as far as an ideal place to settle? Weather-wise, community-wise, convenience-wise...

Do you speak Spanish or Portuguese at all?

Here on permies.com there seems to be a lot more going on in Portugal than in Spain. I think that may or may not be true in fact. Property is probably cheaper as a rule in Portugal, so good for permie transplants, and I think the Portuguese tend to be more confident English speakers than the Spanish so they may post here more often. Don't forget the "Iberia" forum, which is where you'll find all the stuff related to Spain & Portugal.

Here is a permaculture website for the Iberian peninsula:

http://reddepermaculturaiberica.pbworks.com/w/page/13844757/FrontPage

It at least gives some contact details of a lot of groups and people to contact. I'm not sure how up to date any of it is.

One center that is active and may be able to hook you up with people is:

http://www.permacultura-montsant.org/

in Catalonia (northeast of Spain).

Good luck and have fun!