Ecovillage Action Week — Late Registration

Serve and Connect with Earthaven

Two Sessions!
May 30 – June 3 or October 10 – 14, 2022

Earthaven Ecovillage
Near Asheville, NC

Do you want to experience community and network with community builders?
Do you want to learn skills, gain insights and get to know the Earthaven community?
Do you want to contribute to something larger than yourself while also enjoying yourself?

Be an active participant in the everyday rhythm of life and work at Earthaven Ecovillage!

The best way to experience Earthaven’s way of living is to pitch in and experience it yourself. During Ecovillage Action Week, you’ll work side-by-side with residents, making meaningful contributions while exploring new skills and expanding your ideas of alternative living. You’ll learn by doing and getting to know the community — and having a lot of fun in the process.

In addition to community work parties, you’ll have the chance to enjoy meals with community members, as well as the option to participate in yoga, meditation, hiking, and Earthaven neighborhood and home tours.

Moving firewood at Earthaven Ecovillage

The experience is about being able to converse with your fellow workers without the roar of machinery drowning you out. It’s about joining many hands to make something beautiful.

Helen

Looking for more information about the Earthaven experiment?

This hands-on, service-based program is designed to follow the Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Weekend, which provides classes, presentations, and discussions about what Earthaven is doing and why. Enroll in both programs for a full-featured intensive experience at Earthaven Ecovillage.

Useful Plants Nursery work party

Highlights

  • Working together to contribute to the beauty and functionality of the ecovillage
  • Conversing with villagers over dinner, around the fire, and in neighborhood work parties
  • Touring Earthaven’s common areas, buildings, and off-grid facilities
  • Exploring Earthaven’s off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods and homes
  • Connecting with the natural world, including hardwood forests, creeks, and birds
  • Practicing self-care as a pathway to rejuvenation through meditation, yoga, hiking, and soccer
  • Contributing to something bigger than ourselves in the fresh mountain air
  • Learning about residency and membership realities and pathways

Community activity examples

  • Community potluck
  • Coffee and trade marketplace
  • Soccer
  • Fire circles
  • Meditation and yoga
  • Forest hikes and bird watching
  • Neighborhood meet-and-greet
  • Conversations about residency and membership realities and pathways
Two women tending plants at Earthaven Ecovillage

The Experience

Ecovillage Action Week gives you the opportunity to work collaboratively to accomplish whatever task is at hand, contribute to new experiments in regenerative lifeways, and experience the joy and satisfaction of having done so with new friends.

This experience combines your head, hands, and heart to ground your theoretical understanding of community into an applicable action-oriented lifestyle. Embody a holistic approach to living, thinking, and serving others.

Each day will feature a coordinated half-day work party plus at least one optional community activity.

Work party examples

  • Preparing biochar
  • Processing firewood
  • Organizing the Free Store
  • Tending the Forest Garden
  • Beautifying the Village Center
  • Protecting native habitat by removing invasives
  • Helping Earthaven villagers in their farms and gardens
Man viewing forest at Earthaven Ecovillage
Sifting clay for natural building
Woman and plant at Earthaven work party
Tending the Earthaven Peace Garden

Program Schedule

Monday
1:00 Arrival
1:00 Check in and set up
2:30 Welcome and orientation
3:30 Earthaven tour
6:30 Dinner (provided)
7:30 Opening fire circle

Tuesday
Breakfast (self-prepared)
9:00  Coffee and trade marketplace
10:30 Exercise and work options
12:00 Lunch (self-prepared) & Rest/independent time
2:00 Work party
5:00 Soccer
6:30 Community potluck and grill (provided)

Wednesday
8:00 Morning activity (optional)
Breakfast (self-prepared)
9:00 Work party
12:00 Lunch (self-prepared) & Rest/independent time
2:00 Community exploration activities
5:00 Independent time
6:30pm Dinner (provided)

Thursday
8:00 Morning activity (optional)
Breakfast (self-prepared)
9:00 Work party
12:00 Lunch (self-prepared) & Rest/independent time
2:00 – 5:00pm Community exploration activities
5:00 – 6:30pm Independent time
6:30 Dinner (Provided)

Friday
8:00 Morning activity (optional)
Breakfast (self-prepared)
9:00 Work party
12:00 Closing circle
1:30 Lunch (self-prepared), pack, and depart

Sliding Scale Tuition

Because some people have more financial means than others, we have created a sliding scale fee system to accommodate a range of economic realities. The high-end of the scale reflects the value we believe the program holds, and the low-end offers a more accessible entry point.

By choosing a higher price point, you are helping make the program more accessible to others for whom the low-end may be cost-prohibitive. Please consider your needs and resources to determine what might be a stretch, but not a strain.

Cost

General
Tuition Sliding Scale: $200-300

What’s Included

Tuition includes all Earthaven fees, program facilitation, and dinners.

Participants are responsible for their own breakfasts and lunches, transportation, and personal needs, as well as their desired accommodations. 

Scholarships
We offer partial scholarships (50% of the middle of the sliding scale) to black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) with financial needs who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend. We understand that BIPOC experience more financial and institutional barriers to participation, and this is one way we are able to create more access. If you identify as BIPOC with financial needs and would like to receive a scholarship, please contact us.

Logistics

Lodging

Several accommodation options are available at Earthaven Ecovillage and in the surrounding area.

Camping
Cost per person: 4 nights $70

Campground Cabin Shared Lodging
Cost per person: 4 nights $95
(not available for May and June programs)

Shared Indoor Lodging
Cost per person: 4 nights $125

Private Indoor Lodging
Cost for 1 person: 4 nights $175
Cost for 2 people (shared bed): 4 nights $262.50

Off-Site Options
Various options in Bat Cave, Black Mountain, and Asheville.

Read More About Accommodations

Health Considerations

To meet our needs for connection and learning as well as health and safety, we’re creatively adapting our programs. SOIL’s in-person classes take place primarily outdoors, with appropriate shelter in inclement weather.

Let’s connect with each other and the natural world to stay healthy!

For more information, see SOIL's Health and Safety Practices.

Food

Composite image of bowls of pasta, soup and salad

Delicious, omnivorous meals are prepared by talented culinary artists from the Earthaven community. Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options available. Beverages (tea, coffee) are provided. Participants are invited to help with meal clean-up. Many hands make light work.

As much food as possible is sourced from Earthaven and its surrounding farms and gardens, with some ingredients sourced from local grocery stores. Our meals are created with seasonal, local, fresh, wildcrafted, humanely-raised, and organic ingredients.

***If you have dietary needs beyond the ones listed here, please be prepared to bring supplemental food to support your nourishment and well-being. Our kitchen cannot accommodate all diets.

Program Specific Info

Four dinners are included, Monday through Thursday

Cancellation & Refunds

If you cancel your registration, you may:

  • Donate your tuition to support our continued work
  • Request a refund per our policy:
    • 90% refund for cancellations prior to 30 days before the start of the program
    • 50% refund for cancellations prior to 10 days before the start of the program

If SOIL cancels this program for any reason whatsoever, you would receive a 100% refund.

Contact us at [email protected] with registration questions.

Crowdfunding & Fundraising

Check out our Crowdfunding & Fundraising page for creative ways to engage your community and launch a "Community Supported Education" campaign. This approach can help support your investment in yourself, your community, the planet, and future generations.

Location

This program takes place at Earthaven Ecovillage. This permaculture-based community offers a unique living classroom where participants will engage with the natural world, eco-infrastructure, and the intimate experience of rural community living.

What to Expect at Earthaven

Facilitators

NikiAnne Feinberg

NikiAnne Feinberg

In-person Programs Director, Faculty

Throughout the last two decades, NikiAnne has been immersed in community and in service to a wide range of educational endeavors focused on nature connection, personal empowerment, and community resilience. No matter what she’s teaching, NikiAnne is always on the same mission: to raise awareness of our whole selves – gifts, passions, blind spots, shadows – and help those whole selves find and fill niches in their communities.

Becky Boisvert

Becky Boisvert

Program Coordinator

An inveterate adventurer, Becky (she/her) has grown to see life itself as the adventure. That life is made richer in community at Earthaven where Becky, her daughter Willow, and her co-parent Sanne moved in 2018. She loves bringing lofty, creative visions to life. In her first career as an educator, she taught at an arts-integrated charter school, mentored gap-year students in India and Guatemala, and created a holistic middle school. Since then, she has produced two documentary films, coached individuals and couples toward greater wholeness, and begun holding mediations.

Registration

Complete the registration form once per participant. It takes 5-10 minutes, and you will complete your enrollment with a credit card authorization. After your enrollment is processed, you will receive several confirmations…
  1. An automatic confirmation of receiving your registration form
  2. A payment confirmation from our card processor
  3. Confirmation that your registration has been processed

Click the link for your session.

May 30 – June 3 Registration

Participant Info - Step 1 of 3

Ecovillage Action Week

May 30 - June 3, 2022
Given what's alive for you in life right now and where you want to go in your life, how would participating be most valuable to you?
Please check all that apply

October 10-14 Registration

Participant Info - Step 1 of 3

Ecovillage Action Week

Oct 10-14, 2022
Given what's alive for you in life right now and where you want to go in your life, how would participating be most valuable to you?
Please check all that apply