ESC: Mandala - Brick by Brick

Our association was founded in 2004. We have 3 main activities: child development, background support for performing arts and cultural programs and "Dombfalva project" for sustainability. As our original activity we function as a child care institution, dealing with the development of children with special educational needs using different therapeutic methodologies. Meanwhile we support musicians mostly by maintaining a rehearsal place. A few years ago we started to focus our activities to cultural and eco-conscious programmes. We realised in our environment that people lack sufficient knowledge on nature protection and we considered it a serious problem. Urbanisation is a spreading process all over the word and it has a lot of side effects on our quality of lives and environment too. We agreed that we are in need of a place where to establish a venue for eco-conscious programs. A property has been purchased not too far from our capital city Budapest (half an hour of driving, 45 min. by train). This 4 hectare area is located in a small valley next to a village called "Domonyvölgy". Our desire is to develop a natural community place named "Dombfalva" and we wish to work with young people who would like to share their lifestyles and whom are willing to learn new skills in an informal way. This way they can use their obtained eco-knowledge in their private lives and also in any other of their future decisions. We think an ESC project is the best opportunity for us to upgrade our community, this would help us to give a higher standard of services to our visitors. The experience of a volunteer project could give personal development for us and our members. We cooperate with other domestic NGOs, but we would like to broaden our horizon and establish international cooperative relations. Our organisation strongly believes that young people are more open to make a change and alter their habits, that is why we plan to work with them. We are looking for people who are interested in alternative architecture techniques, sustainable lifestyle and whom are willing to explore how to make local changes in their close surroundings. Right now we are working hard to organise a community place where people can share their ideas about sustainability and we organise workshops for volunteers to put these ideas into practical. With our volunteers we have already managed to build a straw bale house with clay-coating, summer kitchen, fireplace, outdoor shower, a willow-dome and dry toilets and a small forest playground for kids.