This year we are opening up 3 specific volunteer positions in the infrastructure and building domain. Taking on this position we expect you to dedicate 60% of your working-time in the domain.

Suderbyn infrastructure team works with everything related to the physical infrastructure in our ecovillage. Examples of tasks within the domain are: renovation of a shower with reused material, construction of all kind of furniture, maintenance of our cars and bikes, cleaning the workshop and fixing broken tools, taking trash to the recycling stations, empty the rain water tanks, and much more. Everyday life in the infrastructure team is therefore not always impressive construction projects, but also repetitive and dirty work. sometimes in the cold. And we hope that you are ready for all of it 🙂

As part of the team your days will be filled out by a diverse range of physical and mental tasks varying from small and quick maintenance tasks, to bigger building projects that require planning, gathering of materials and organising the execution, but also planning and organising weekly meetings and prioritising tasks according to necessity, time pressure and available resources. Even though your main focus will be within this domain, the position leaves many opportunities to experience the diversity of experiences that ecovillage life has to offer.

The philosophy is to follow permaculture design principles in our plans and processes, in order to minimise the domain’s environmental footprints and its use of resources (time, money, materials, etc.). We are all continuously learning to navigate the endless possibilities of designs, functions, techniques, materials, processes, beautification etc. to figure out which combinations are best aligned with our philosophy.

The existing team is composed of people with different backgrounds, skills and experiences. Depending on the people in Suderbyn at any given time, the knowledge and experience levels of the team differ, but we help each other by asking other team members (sometimes even members who have left) for advice throughout any process. So, even those people who have little or no experience in the domain can successfully complete even the most complicated tasks, and learn any skill. There is always new knowledge to learn with each new project, and we hope that you are open to take on a pedagogical role and are ready to be both teacher and student in different situations.

During the year, you will first receive an introduction to the domain, and have time to learn and gather experiences. Depending on the specific tasks and your skill level, we encourage you to take initiative and help out with managing projects, together with the current domain members. According to the experience you have before coming and the interests you develop during your year in Suderbyn, we will help you to ensure that you will have meaningful learning experiences.

Volunteer profile

You are interested in sustainable solutions, materials and methods and you are interested in building, creating and fixing. You don’t have to have any specific skills or experiences in order to apply for this position. What is mainly important, is your motivation.  If you do have experiences and want to further develop these within an eco-community setting, we are of course grateful for that, and look forward to helping you deepen them, as well as learning from you. Additionally, it is important that you like to work with other people, in a team.

You are of course welcome to be a part of the domain even if you don’t want to take on the official “Roof Keepers” position. Everyone at Suderbyn is welcome to join our weekly meetings, to see where they can help or if they want to take on a project of their own, and everyone can always offer to help domain members during the course of a project.