We currently looking for new volunteers to begin July or September 2008, those wishing to spend their summer holiday of a couple of months, and those looking to fill a gap year, or to spend a longer time with us.
We are in the happy position of having 5 new volunteers who intend to work with us until the summer of 2009. In 2009 we will be looking for new volunteers to spend their summer holidays or to fill a gap year or to spend a longer time with us.
We welcome both those who can offer a regular day and also those
who come for up to a year to live and work with us.
Hilfield Project Volunteers
Sharing in the life of the Hilfield Community and working on the Peace and Environment Project is a group of resident volunteers, who join us for up to a year. They receive free board and lodging in one of the Project houses and £25 per week pocket money. We are often looking for new volunteers who are willing to offer a period of their lives in caring for the environment and working for peace and reconciliation, and are seeking experience in these areas.
What you might be doing if you come to volunteer with us.
- Organic gardening, growing vegetables for the Hilfield Community and for the wider public.
- Looking after the woodlands, coppicing and harvesting wood for fuel and for craft work
- Managing a thorough re-cycling programme and helping us live here with a light footprint
- Caring for the groups who come stay in our houses
- Welcoming day groups and school parties which come to learn about issues living peaceably with people and with the environment.
- Using computer skills to help with publicity and building up contacts
The resident volunteers live as a small community, sharing a separate house, but also joining the wider Hilfield Community for most meals and some community events. You’ll have your own room and two days off each week. There’s a sense of fun about our life together and we encourage shared outings and special meals. There’s a place for learning and practicing craft work while you are with us and an opportunity to study some of the subjects with which the Project is concerned. We welcome individual initiative, bringing experience and new ideas to what we are doing.
Day volunteers
The wonderful thing about coming over to Hilfield is that you become involved with remarkable people who all insist that they are utterly ordinary. And ordinary remarks – a question about a question – and ordinary things – plants, weeds or the sheep now in residence – have far greater value than is commonly recognised.
So volunteering on the Project – formerly two days a week, now just one – has involved entering what some may call a topsy-turvy world. One’s foundations move. What is this? What is that? Who are you?
I haven’t known the commitment of community life but I have dug, painted, attended study, planted out seedlings, identified grasses and flowers, drunk endless coffee and tea. I make a point of attending the midday office with the ancient repeated psalms. What a resource all these things are!
Not being scientific enough to understand true ecology, I have really appreciated the company of people who know what companion planting is, about soil, and the sanctity of the rhythms of nature. I, too, now know that to return there is the only way forward.
Nor am I overly religious but have also learnt that stillness with conviction reveals an undeniable goodness that is another path, or perhaps the only path.
By mucking in and standing shivering in the courtyard where there is always such a rare quality of light clutching one’s cuppa on a February morning you stumble across these things and feel renewed.
This afternoon I was ravished by the beauty of the blues in the garden. There was a kind of giant vetch and clusters of phesalea and the blue blue of borage emerging through and the contrast of mustard rampant throughout. What a treat! Remarkable? Ordinary? If only to let it be, in its time – a gift for anyone in need.
We are also happy to welcome those who can offer a shorter period of time to the Project, for instance a couple of days per month in the gardens, chopping wood, cleaning the houses, cooking a meal, or helping with administration.
Like to learn more?
Contact Development Officer Sarah Hargreaves hilfieldproject@franciscans.org.uk
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