What is the difference between a visitor and a guest?
A visitor is someone that has no previous existing link to any Suderbynian.
The guest status applies to 14 days (or less) visitors that are invited by a current community member. It can be family members, friends, or aspiring community members. If you are a guest, ask your reference person to communicate with you the prices for staying in Suderbyn 🙂

In order to avoid too much traffic in the community, which can be draining for us, the minimum length for a stay in Suderbyn for visitors is 2 weeks. If you want to visit for less than 2 weeks, you can still contact us and explain your situation, we might do an exception to our policy if you have good reasons.

Short Term Visitors: from 14 days to 30 days:
For short term visitors (between two weeks and one month), the rent and food allowance is based on a daily basis. If you already know you want to stay longer than 30 days, then go to the page “Rent/Food prices for long term visit“
“Volunteers” (visitors that work with us an average of 20h/week) have a discount compared to “tourists” (visitors that don’t participate to the communal work). You can see at the bottom of this page what is considered as a working hour.

Here are the daily rents, in swedish crowns :

For the food allowance, there are two categories. The “internal” category, for people who eat every meals in Suderbyn, and the “external” category, for people who eat lunches outside.
Here is the daily food allowance, in swedish crowns :

How to apply for a short term visit ?
The process to apply for a short term visit is very easy !
You just need to send us an email at info@suderbyn.se that contains :
1) A short presentation of yourself and your motivations to come to Suderbyn
2) The estimated dates of your visit (as accurate as possible when writing the email)
3) An indication if you want a single room / are willing to share a room / are willing to stay in a tent
4) A confirmation that you have read our information for visitors and our co-living principles and that you consent to them

By reception of your email, your request will be relayed to the community meeting, and sociocratically voted.

Sheets, towels and working clothes
We have towels and sheets which you can use, but please make sure to wash them before you leave. Or, if you leave early in the morning, ask someone from the community to help you. Feel free to bring some work clothes/shoes, but we also have community work clothes which you can borrow. We also have a ‘freeshop’ in which you can find lots of clothes and donate those you no longer want.

Ecological and biodegradable products
We support buying only ecological food products when buying personal food. We use ONLY biodegradable personal hygiene products, such as shampoo, tooth paste, etc.,  and we expect the same from our guests. If you do not have 100% natural (biodegradable) personal hygiene products, you can buy them in Suderbyn. We urge you not to use non-biodegradable products because they will end up in our water supply.

Working hours
Work in Suderbyn is defined as any energy put into a project whose benefits can be directly enjoyed by at least 5 Suderbynians (including oneself).
For example, cooking dinner for oneself is not work, but cooking dinner for 5 people is.
The project doesn’t need to be beneficial to 5 or more Suderbynians if and only if the project is part of the coordinated work, or part of employee responsibilities.
Participation to the Monday Morning Meeting, the Community Meeting, the Domain Meeting, the Sharing Circle, and any Working Group meeting, counts as work.
Participation to the coordinated work obviously counts as work.
Participation to the social well being of Suderbyn (hosting and preparing circles, hosting and preparing activities, mentoring sessions, mediating a conflict transformation) counts as work.
Participation to the hygiene maintenance of communal spaces counts as work. Cleaning one’s own bedroom does not count as work.
Participation to the essentials counts as work.
Participation to a project that benefits the ReLearn NGO counts as work, even if the ReLearn project does not benefit Suderbyn directly.
A project that only benefits oneself does not count as work : assuming that by making you more happy, thus a nicer roommate, it will be beneficial to the rest of the community, is not a valid argument.
On arrival, new Suderbynians are introduced to a task list where they can get ideas of how to be useful to the community.
For projects that are not listed in the document, one needs to make sure, before putting energy into it, that the rest of the community agrees that it is a beneficial project to commit to.
For example, if one paints a wall without asking the community / domain coordinator, this will not count as working hours, because nobody wanted the wall to be painted in the first place.
The way to get this feedback is to approach the coordinators of the relevant domains ; ask the core team during a core meeting ; or ask directly to the community in a morning meeting or a community meeting.

Why is it not free to come as a volunteer?
We of course appreciate anyone cilling to give time and energy to Suderbyn. However, Suderbyn already has 10 long-term volunteers from the European Solidarity Corps (generally for a year) who need coordination.
Having extra hands to coordinate, expecially if someone need to learn most of what we are doing, can sometimes feel more like extra work for us than help. As a conclusion, we do not operate like WWOOFing!