Lunaria, z.s.

description of organisation

Lunaria civic association was founded in 1996 and has these main aims: to save nature and landscape, to promote ecology and sustainability, fair and equal society and to enhance cultural and humanity values in Frýdlant region. We believe the most important changes of society is hidden in next generation, therefore we work mainly with different children groups and also run new community project – Free Democratic School RONJA, which is Club for homeschoolers, where we have enough time to create better relationships based on trust from both sides (children x adults). Our organization is situated in 2 historical buildings with small farm (14 hectares) in rural area in small village Jindřichovice pod Smrkem (700 inhabitants). We are running Living Open-air Museum, which is open for tourists from April to September and shows people ancient ecological sustainable way of living (2 big historical buildings + traditional small buildings – summer kitchen, historical mill...) and also caring for 14 hectares of landscape (meadows, pastures, forest, lakes, balks..). The whole area is based on ecology, using rural technologies – minimum of electricity, heating with wood only, composting toilets only, sustainable simple gravity-fed water system.

Typical regular activities are:

a) Working for nature
Typical tasks are: working with soil, sowing, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting and fruit and vegetable processing, caring for seeds production, caring for lakes and ponds, trees and bushes, harvesting old wood from the forest with horses, wood chopping and carrying, plouhging with horses caring for animals (we have 4 horses) - feeding with hey, giving fresh water, repairing of fences, cleaning of stable, helping children by horse riding, for horse enthusiasts: practising natural horsemanship communication with young horses, because they need it regularly.

b) Natural eco-building and maintenance
For enthusiasts of natural eco-building and practical volunteers, there are also nice opportunities to help by building from natural materials (wood, clay, straw) and also oven tile wall parts because we still build and need to reconstruct some parts of our compounds. Actual is reconstructing and housekeeping in Living Open-air Museum: the making of clay plaster, wooden floor and ceiling, thermal insulation, working with wood – repairing fences, gates, etc. If volunteers prefer to combine work in nature with working with children, we need also an assistant for the building of children‘s houses outside, handcrafts from wood and smith work and outdoor activity assistance.

c) Activities with children
- to support the teachers in the area of non-formal education within our School. It could be music, art, sport, baking and cooking, traditional crafts, English or Polish lessons, math, geography etc.
-for national profile
–the volunteer can play different outside activities with children (e.g. football) or singing the songs (for e.g. Roma songs, which we have already experienced with our current volunteers).
- helping with the organization of the school trips.
Children´s natural way of learning is encouraged, they learn individual when and what they want, they are in age-mixed and Polish-Czech mixed group. Free democratic school Ronja is running three days a week, target groups are 20 children – homeschoolers in age 6 - 14 from our village and wider area (Frýdlant area and Poland). We live very close to borders with Poland and Germany and one of our priorities is also to enhance solidarity between people, while respecting their cultures and their traditions. Therefore we have always promoted and created intercultural interconnection between next Polish alternative village Wolimierz and our community.

d) Weekdays or specific tasks
During all activities we also need to share together in our team basic houseworks - cleaning, sweeping, washing dishes, help by cooking, fire making, wood chopping and water carrying.

If somebody has the abilities to learn it and do it, we welcome help with PC work and camera – Public Relations (taking photos, sorting of pictures and saving them systematically or creating YouTube channel videos)

We would like to host 2 volunteers for 1 year. The volunteers could be both 2 national (as we want to support Roma community) or 2 international. It depends also on situation, if we could find another Roma volunteer, who wants to join us. One national volunteer and 1 international volunteer could be also option for us.
We prefer to have volunteers starting from the summer season (June/July). Our web is: www.zijiciskanzen.cz