ESC: Volunteering in Upcycling Café in the South of France

Court Circuit is a non-profit organisation located at the heart of a rural mountain area with a population of 9,000 facing social and economic challenges. It was founded in 2014 to promote locally grown and environmentally friendly food. In 2017, after several setbacks in developing significant community projects, Court Circuit started a collaborative discussion on how to initiate transition initiatives in the region. This led to the idea of building a “community hub” that would be a place to buy local, a place to share knowledge, practices, and tools, a place to meet people from various cultural and social background, a place to fix and reuse. At the end of 2019, the organisation bought the “Buffet de la Gare,” an empty hotel that had been closed for fifteen years, a huge building of 850-meter square, located at the train station in Veynes-Devoluy, a small town in the Hautes-Alpes region. The train station acts as a transportation hub, connecting Paris to the South with a daily train. The building was acquired through loans, equity, and crowdfunding, allowing quick development during 2020 despite the pandemic. The organisation’s members built a grocery store, a second-hand shop, and a bar on the ground floor; and a bike workshop and community rooms on the first floor. The organisation was able to support its business activity in less than a year of operations, thanks to a significant volunteer involvement. The second-hand shop is developing partnerships with charity organisations and local shops, like the second hand clothes shop situated in the city center. The grocery store works with nearly fifty different, mostly local producers, selected for their environmentally sound and human-friendly practices. Today, Court Circuit has more than 400 members in the region, including close to a hundred actively engaged volunteers. In the next stage, 200-meter square of shared space will be rehabilitated, including a meeting room and a coworking space, the first of its kind in the region. There are already several exciting projects slated for this shared space. The purpose of the Buffet de la Gare is to be a collaborative place where people can create new initiatives promoting powerful relationships and sharing, as well as social connectedness in a rural and remote area. The full story of the Buffet de la Gare can be found on the Court Circuit website. This website is also a hub for resources on Climate Transition. Court Circuit aims to promote environment-oriented producer-to-consumer initiatives in all areas of life—food, arts, and knowledge and skills sharing. This includes the following: —Promoting healthy eating for all, with low environmental impact; —Promoting social connections and relationships across cultures and generations; —Assisting in transitioning to reduce waste through reusing and zero waste strategies; and —Encouraging entrepreneurship in the community to boost the local economy. Target audience: —Residents of the town and the valley; —Buëch producers and entrepreneurs; —Travellers to or from Veynes-Devoluy train station located less than fifty metres from the Buffet de la Gare. —Non-profits, the local government, government institutions, schools, day care, recreation centres, vacation centres, and campgrounds (international camp).