Vegan Volunteer Community

The Community Haiti

Sadhana Forest Haiti is a place where you can be, and feel, an integral part of Nature. It is a place of sharing. We host volunteers from all over the world and also have a large number of local Haitian long-term volunteers. We eat all three meals together, share our living and sleeping areas, and share the essential duties that help the community and project run smoothly and simply. We live under certain guidelines and schedules that help us function as a community.

In the wider community of Anse-a-pitres, Sadhana Forest collaborates and works regularly with several local groups and organizations. A lot of our tree planting activities takes place in the homes of people from Anse-a-Pitres and also in other neighboring mountain villages and towns.

Sadhana Forest Haiti aims to create long-term sustainable solutions and food security with the local community of the Anse-à-Pitres area. Our goal is to create a relationship with members of the community and empower them with knowledge, skills, and faith in their land to be able to create long-term food security.

Community living in Sadhana Forest Haiti provides many opportunities to develop one’s social and environmental consciousness and creativity.

Daily Schedule

    • 5:15a.m. Wake up call
    • 5:45a.m. Morning circle (deciding first session of volunteer work)
    • 6:00a.m.-8:30a.m. First seva (first session of volunteer work)
    • 8:30a.m.-9:30a.m. Breakfast
    • 9:30a.m.-12:15p.m. Second seva (second session of volunteer work)
    • 12:30p.m. Lunch

*After lunch everyone is free for their own personal activities as long as they carry out their weekly shift such as cooking, compound watering etc.

Workshops

At Sadhana Forest Haiti we benefit from a wide variety of volunteers from many different backgrounds. Volunteers can offer to share knowledge they have and host a workshop. This can be any type of knowledge someone has and would like to share with the volunteer community. If you have knowledge or skills, this is the place to share it.

We are a place of constant experimentation and innovation, be it trying to build a rocket stove or making a mobile out of trash. We encourage our volunteers to come up with simple yet efficient ways to tackle a lot of the problems faced in the local communities.

Occasionally we offer intensive spoken Creole workshops for volunteers that are staying with us over a longer period of time.

From time to time we also offer workshops in the local communities to improve the environmental and social conditions. Tree planting and tree care, recycling, composting, stitching ecological and hygienic cloth pads for women, upcycling, crafts with the children, English lessons for our Haitian volunteers and friends are some of the workshops we have offered here so far.

You can read more about the intensive tree planting, tree care and permaculture trainings here: ADD LINK

Open Stage Night

Every Wednesday we meet after dinner to have an open stage night. We like to call this evening our “non-talent night” as anyone can perform, whether you have a talent or not you’re welcome to come on stage and share it with everyone. This can be anything from telling a joke, singing a song, playing a game, or playing an instrument.

Guidelines

Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco Free Environment

Sadhana Forest Haiti is a place where we concentrate on raising our consciousness. Using drugs, alcohol, and tobacco does not support our process and therefore Sadhana Forest Haiti is a drug, alcohol, and tobacco free environment. We have also found that these substances can have a negative effect on the community and social life as well as the obvious effects on health. Sadhana Forest Haiti is also home to quite a few children and young adults and we do not wish to have them exposed to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

All our residential volunteers make a signed commitment to abstain from these activities during their entire stay in Sadhana Forest Haiti, whether inside or outside the campus.

We understand the difficulties in giving up habits such as these, but we commit to help and fully support whoever chooses to come stay at Sadhana Forest. We have had quite a few people successfully give up these addictions after staying with us. If you would like to experiment in living without drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, we welcome you to come and volunteer with us.

If you are not ready to make such a commitment we fully understand and hope to host you in the future when you are.

Competition Free Environment

Sadhana Forest Haiti tries to experiment on many levels of reforestation, sustainable living and community living. One of the aspects we chose to experiment with is trying to take out an element that exists in our lives on a daily basis – competition. We aim to create an atmosphere of co-operation rather than competition.

We’ve received feedback from volunteers who have stayed with us, that their confidence was boosted while staying in Sadhana Forest. We feel that an important element to this is removing the competitive aspects from our lives here.

In Sadhana Forest Haiti we do not play any competitive games. This helps promote creativity as children and adults try to think of how to play a non-competitive game or how to take out the competitive element of a game that usually is competitive.