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Help with Building and Decorating at the Kalavan Retreat Center

5.0
(4 reviews)4

The experience

I'm Gregory, an American author and international traveler who has established a personal development retreat center in Kalavan village in the Gegharkunik province of Armenia, located less than an hour from Dilijan and Ijevan. Our focus is now on building an international community model for extended stays from locals and foreigners alike who seek the freedom to live as they want.

What you offer

20 hours of help per week

Gardening: Help grow plants and cultivate gardens

Painting & Decorating: Help with painting or decorating the property facilities.

Cleaning: Help clean the kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and common areas.

Building & Repairing: Help with a wide range of repairs or building.

What you get

2 days off per week

Shared Dorm: You will have a bed in a shared room, which means you will share the same room with other travelers.

Breakfast: You are entitled to a free breakfast, every day of your stay.

Lunch: You are entitled to a free lunch, every day of your stay.

Dinner: You are entitled to a free dinner, every day of your stay.

Free Laundry: You can use our laundry room freely.

Language lessons: Take free language classes at our place.

Use our equipped kitchen: Feel free to use our kitchen and make your own delicious food.

Basic Internet Access: Basic speed internet for you to work remotely

Dedicated Workspace: Specific space for you to work remotely

Requirements

Intermediate English

Welcomes solo volunteers, couples, and partners of volunteers

What's not included

Flights, Travel Insurance, Internal Transportation and Visa

Program Details

I need creative and organized people who can help make the house cleaner and more beautiful, including the outdoor areas. Use your imagination. There's a lot the right people can contribute to what I've started here. I'd like it to become a fully functional guesthouse and retreat center for personal development among Armenians.

Activities & Shift

You will have a comfortable bed in a shared bedroom (usually limited to 3 or 4 people per room at peak capacity) and access to the whole house, including kitchen, outdoors, office, and two bathrooms. Meals are provided. Volunteers organize cooking and cleaning according to what makes most sense for the people currently inhabiting the house. We also take in paying guests, so sometimes rooms or meals may need to be rearranged to accommodate them while they are here.

Bonus: My neighbor now hosts the first convenience store in Kalavan. You won't have to drive back into town every time you want to buy simple food ingredients, cigarettes, etc. It's small for now, but the inventory is always expanding.

Rules

One of our top priorities now is keeping the wrong kind of people out. Regardless of what kind of experience or skills you can offer us, it's not worth it if you are going to be the cause of serious interpersonal conflict while you are here. Our non-problematic guests appreciate the policies we've put in place regarding this to improve the social experience for them while they are here.

Note that we automatically reject any applicants who use AI or translation software to write their profiles or messages. We consider this a blatant misrepresentation of your personality, skills, values, and/or English abilities. We require at least conversational English abilities for our volunteers. If you cannot communicate in English comfortably enough to write a few coherent sentences about yourself in your own words, there is no way you will be able to comfortably live and work with us.

We are also not interested in hosting volunteers whose primary goal is just to have a free place to live in exchange for meeting the bare minimum work requirements. We want people who are eager to grow as individuals and apply themselves with earnest interest in new areas of skill development and intellectual/emotional growth. By cultivating the right kind of people, we keep it possible to give an enormous amount of freedom to the type and amount of work our volunteers do here. However, if we let even one person who needs constant direction and micromanagement because they don't genuinely value their work or the experience of living here, it makes things harder for everyone else here.

Please read our article, Six Types of Volunteers We Don't Want at the Kalavan Retreat Center:
https://www.kalavan.net/l/six-types-of-volunteers-we-don-t-want-at-the-kalavan-retreat-center/